Where Do We Go From Here: The Future of Black Studies

[Photo credit: The Washington Post/Getty Images]

By Kemuel Benyehudah

Globalization, immigration and intermarriage have led to contemporary black identity becoming more complex. Black Studies emphasis on the nationalist perspectives in the discipline may be causing it to limit broader discussions around the black experience. Shockley and Cleveland (2011) exhorts black students to connect to a “larger struggle” rooted in Afrocentrism, but they don’t describe the benefits of looking at three emerging trends. The discipline faces the following challenges: 1) How to maintain relevance within an increasingly neoliberal higher education culture? 2) How to meet the needs of a black student body which has seen its interethnic diversity grow? 3) How to respond to declining Black Studies degrees awarded and subsequent threats of defunding? This paper critically examines the aforementioned three trends which are changing black identity.

To address these trends, this paper posits a conceptual framework utilizing epistemic privilege, inquiry, and multiplicity. Kuhn (1962) argued that a “paradigm shift” occurs when the persons in the field agree on the conceptual model to solve a particular problem. In the past the discipline of Black Studies relied on foregrounding whiteness for analysis and integration from the margins (Butler, 2011). Whereas today, the field is faced with addressing the growing state of hybridity among black students. Glick (2012) argued that “contemporary identity studies cannot adequately speak to the challenges that have begun to emerge” (p. 520). Due to these rapid changes occurring in the black community, this paper proposes a reconceptualization of the field of Black Studies to address this rising emergence..

Why must new black voices rise from the margins in higher education and be heard?

On any given day, multiple conversations are taking place in higher education related to the diverse experiences shaping black students' lives. Often, these experiences originated in black students communities and then moved to academic disciplines for validation. However, some  experiences have not been properly documented and catalogued in the records of higher education. Harding (2004) a feminist scholar argued that the conditions of “oppression and marginalization” occur in academic disciplines when there is “unequal access to epistemic resources” to theorize and explain phenomena (p. 348). Black Studies emerged as a critique of higher education’s oppression of black epistemic privileges during the civil rights era (Okafor, 2014). However, for many black students living in the post-civil rights era, the Black Studies nationalist framework offers constraints which may make the discipline unappealing. One which stands out, is a perceived lack of sensitivity towards the cultural, social, and historical differences of black students in higher education. 

According to Giroux (2004) “despite the growing cultural diversity of students in higher education, there are few examples of curricular sensitivity to the multiplicity of economic, social, and cultural factors bearing on students’ lives” (p. 101). Black students falling outside of the historical lineage of the Black Studies discipline may not see themselves in the traditional scholarship and may choose not to enroll because of this reason. When considering the growing neoliberal agenda of modern universities today, declines in Black Studies degrees earned is a vector that the discipline can ill afford (Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 2014). According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2011 - 2015) the number of Bachelor’s degrees awarded in Black Studies fell by 37% percent between 2010-11 and 2014-15, while the number of master’s degrees dropped by 32%.

This is problematic since mainstream disciplines rarely apply sustained critical inquiry into systemic racism and the historical forces that have shaped black identity (Jones, 2011). More to the point, supporters of Black Studies argued that racially neutral stances are examples of institutional racism (Phillips, 2010). According to Rojas (2007) black scholars have argued that institutional autonomy is necessary if black students are to be afforded the opportunity to make deeper meaning about their lived experiences. However, if black students do not have access to “critical communities” that provide them with opportunities to unpack their experiences, then it may be difficult for them to form bonds of trust and solidarity outside of their insider groups (Bettez, 2011). Adding to this point, Douglas and Peck (2013) said that the black diaspora includes many subcultures within it, and should not oversimplify all people of African descent within one narrative. As such, honoring “difference” would provide an opportunity for a more robust discussion of blackness in higher education. In the section below, we will look at the particular set of historical circumstances which Black Studies was situated within, and discuss how this differs from the post-civil rights era.

Historical overview of Black Studies during the civil rights to the post-civil rights era

Before we can enter into a meaningful discussion around Black Studies, it is important to briefly look at the field from an historical context. After the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling in 1896, de jure segregation barred black people from higher education. Until the civil rights era, segregation left black people with very few tertiary options except for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Allen & Jewell, 2002). The pre-civil rights era didn’t close until the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 ended de jure segregation (Smith, 2014). Yet, even after this legal victory, black students’ experiences were still mostly excluded from the dominant higher education curriculum.

According to Rogers (2012) “students developed and first presented the Black Studies idea to a group of professors in 1966” (p. 22). However, Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968 helped motivate a conviction in black students to challenge the status quo in higher education (Rojas, 2007). Following this tragic event, the San Francisco State student strike in 1968 was one of the first legitimate attempts to integrate Black Studies into higher education. The documentary Agents of Change (2016) argued that Black Studies’ institutionalization at San Francisco State was the Brown vs. the Board of Education moment for black students in higher education. Although San Francisco State’s student strike helped integrate the discipline, it also brought the ire of conservatives.

Ever since, Black Studies has been constrained by limited funding opportunities, and an existential preoccupation with fighting back racist practices that pose a threat to the black community.  This historical tradition of defining black students within the context of community arose from demand for a more inclusive curriculum (Pellerin, 2009). Rogers (2010) claimed that the field should retain its connection to the black community, but he doesn’t fully elaborate on who constitutes the community. However, federal, institutional, and neoliberal policies today are complicating the notion of a fixed idea of black community. Meaning, these aforementioned policies are stretching the black community into a more expansive type requiring more border crossing. Hollinger (2006) explored “community” in another way and argued that it became a way of establishing circles of “we” and “they” or who is in and who is out (p. 189). Although Hollinger is not a traditional scholar in Black Studies, his ideas on “suppression of diversity” amongst ethnic “blocs” provides useful perspectives for re-thinking Black Studies mindsets and traditional policies.

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Intermarriage, immigration, and globalization of higher education

As mentioned earlier, there are three trends expanding black identity in the United States. These trends are immigration, intermarriage, and the globalization of higher education. Each of these trends have worked separately and together to expand the notion of the black community. In the sub-sections below we will more closely analyze each trend, and discuss further how each is complicating our traditional constructions of blackness.

Intermarriage

According to Wang (2015) “fully a quarter of black men who got married in 2013 married someone who was not black. While on the other hand, half a quarter of black women married outside of their race.” Anderson (2015) also argued that black immigrants are more likely to be married than native born blacks. Cokely et al. (2015) said, black students are not a monolithic group, but are part of multiple ethnic groups who increasingly identify as biracial or multiracial. Considering these trends, not only are black students diversifying in terms of identity, but they also display distinct levels of educational achievement (Page, 2007). In order to better accommodate interethnic stratification occurring out in the black student population, higher education will need to address these shifts. As higher education continues to become more global, and admit more international students these trends will only continue to grow. This is important to note as higher education learns to better integrate more students of color in the future.   

Immigration

During the Civil Rights era, the black population was less ethnically diverse according to the Pew Research center (2015). According to Anderson (2015) “black immigrants are a diverse group with notable differences in demographic, economic and geographic characteristics, often tied to the regions of their birth countries.” As recently as 1980, only 3.1 % of the black population was foreign born (Kent, 2007).  However, during the post-civil rights era, U.S. immigration policy has caused changes in the black population. The passage of The Immigration act of 1965 and subsequent revisions in 1976, 1980, 1986, and 1990 have led to a tripling of immigrant blacks between 1980 and 2005 (Kent, 2007). According to Trostle and Zheng (2014) “the Census Bureau projects that by 2060, 16.5% of America’s black population will be foreign-born (p. 11 ).” The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, “loosened” and afforded opportunities for family reunification and skilled labor (Kent, 2007, p. 6). Whereas, the U.S. Immigration Act of 1990 increased the number of immigrants from underrepresented nations (Anderson, 2015). Many recent immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean (where this writer’s mother hails from) benefited from these policies (Kent, 2007). The story here is that U.S. immigration policy has not only changed black identity today, but will also do so in the foreseeable future. This is important to note because black immigrants are also more likely than U.S. born blacks to have a college degree or to be married (Anderson, 2015). Therefore, higher education must account for intra-racial differences and not construct all black students as a monolithic identity group.

Globalization of higher education

According to Kent (2007) “higher education has been a favored route for Africans coming to the United States” (p. 9). Education and social mobility is strongly favored by not only immigrant black students, but also by most immigrant students who leave their countries of origin. As a result, Massey et al. (2007) argued that black immigrants are more likely to be overrepresented in the most selective schools. This phenomenon has caused some tensions with U.S. born blacks who argue that foreign born blacks are benefiting from affirmative action policies instead of the descendants of slaves which the policy was designed to redress (Kent, 2007). For this reason (Cokely et al., 2015) said, “addressing only the traditional barriers to higher education is no longer sufficient given the emerging challenges related to the conflation of black ethnic groups and the increasing numbers of biracial and multiracial identification” (p. 48). Hence, in order to more fully capture the diverse narratives of black students in higher education, proposed below is an interdisciplinary framework addressing these trends.

Reconceptualizing Black Studies in higher education

Applying interdisciplinary frameworks would allow Black Studies to move away from the white/black binary and conduct further self examination of the discipline’s scholarship. Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality provide useful frameworks for critically analyzing race relations but not so much for analyzing growing black hybridity. Munoz et al. (2008) argued that “transdisciplinarity” or interdisciplinary scholarship provides ‘fertile ground’ to ‘explode the arbitrary categorical restraints of discipline” (p. 297). In order to respond to these constraints, scholars will need to look outside of their disciplines for inspiration to create new theories. Some of the popular conceptual frameworks for analyzing racial oppression of the “black community” – such as CRT, intersectionality, and disability studies  – fall short in accounting for black students' complexity due to an overreliance on structuralism. To move beyond structuralism and its essentializing tendencies, a more self-reflexive approach is needed in Black Studies (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2002). Making such a move would allow students to engage in critical inquiry with themselves, the Black Studies discipline would provide them with a framework to find their voice in the higher education curriculum. The frameworks proposed for dealing with black identity in the post-civil rights era is epistemic privilege as emerged from Women's Studies, inquiry as influenced by critical theory, and multiplicity as presented by realist accounts of identity.

Identifying epistemic privilege in Black Studies

According to Kotzee (2010) epistemic privilege advantages members of marginalized social groups to describe their oppression. This is because the oppressed “have a systematically clearer view on political reality than their oppressors” (p. 274). As is the case, black students emerging from intermarriage, globalization, and immigration also should have the privilege to assert their knowledge claims and push back on grand narratives of blackness. Borrowing again from Women's Studies, Janack (1997) argued:

“Members of oppressed groups, including all women, have a perspective on the

world that is not just different from the perspective available to members of the

ruling class, but is also epistemically advantageous” (p. 126).

For the purposes of this essay, “ruling class” is defined as the gatekeepers of the Black Studies discipline in higher education. Esteemed black scholars should use their academic power to improve the lives of all black students no matter from where they hail.  Feminist scholar Alcoff (2013) writes that epistemic privilege was appropriated from Marxist thought as a means of empowering the socially marginalized. As such, Black Studies must use its privileged position within the academy to once again empower the marginalized, and not only serve the interest of the neoliberal plutocracy. Meaning, Black Studies must prioritize the black student community’s empirical needs and resist higher education’s tendency to reify black students into racialized stereotypes. Further probing and inquiry is needed to better understand their individual needs.

Inquiry

Structuralism is heavily valued in the civil rights tradition of Black Studies, including higher education. Meaning, the higher education industry’s preoccupation with race in the aggregate often ignores and loses the opportunity to study nuance. Therefore, critiquing and going beyond the white/black binary dominance in education research requires critical inquiry within the discipline, and critical engagement with sister disciplines. For example, Crowley (1999) argued that the construction of the oppressor/oppressed binary within Women’s Studies had to be reconfigured in order to prevent “undertheorization” about the experiences and knowledge about women. Black Studies will need to make a similar move to prevent marginalization of phenomena happening amongst black students.

According to Douglas (2017) inquiry or “searching” involves three interrelated concepts which are research, “mesearch” and “wesearch (p. 22). Mesearch involves interrogating the inner core of who you are; while wesearch searches involves asking questions about what is needed for those we serve; research investigates available research (p. 22). Douglas (2017) said that asking questions would help black students to harness their story, as well as engage in critical dialog with other students bringing their personal histories into the classroom. Therefore, the discipline should accept that some of the questions posed by students will not lead to support of the traditional framework, but to questions of problematizing. Problematizing will help black students to better understand their positionality and relationships and to choose frameworks which makes sense when trying to understand their experiences in the world.

Moving from intersectionality to multiplicity

Intersectionality was coined by Crenshaw (1989) to provide a deeper understanding of how race, class, and gender worked together as an interconnected system of oppression on people of color. However, intersectionality was conceived in the 1980s before recent societal trends started to make a more visible mark in the black student population. As such, Hames-Garcia (2011) said we should rethink our “overextension” of intersectionality, and instead used “multiplicity as a theory of identity rather than a theory of oppression” (preface, 11). As mentioned earlier, waves of new black narratives have entered the conversation, therefore accommodating and integrating these perspectives are crucial for establishing greater solidarity within the discipline, and with students.

According to Choo and Ferree (2010) intersectionality has been essentialized as a framework to study oppression. Whereas, multiplicity is described as the self in relation to social identity, because understanding the self only as the sum of discrete parts is inadequate (p. 5). Borrowing from Hames Garcia, black students must steadily find the commonalities, connections, and similarities of their experiences to “coexist within a complex multiplicity” (p. 34). Meaning, mutual bonds of trust and respect must be re-affirmed within the discipline to ensure that all black students are made to feel welcome to express their right to generate knowledge.

Discussion and Implications of the Counter-Public

If the field hopes to survive, it will require building not only interethnic coalitions but also cross-racial allyship built on mutual dialog and solidarity. According to Chavez (2011) “a significant function of rhetoric within contexts of movement activity is to generate coalitions” (p. 2). As Chavez discussed, these multicultural coalitions can function as “counterpublics” to support black students scholarship and activism on their campuses. Adding to the ideas on counter publics mentioned earlier, Frazer (1995) said:

“Historically…. members of subordinated social groups - women, workers, peoples of color, and gays and lesbians - have repeatedly found it advantageous to constitute alternative publics. I have called these “subaltern counterpublics” in order to signal that they are parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses.” (p. 291)

During the civil rights era, institutionalization of Black Studies brought the conversation from the margins and into the center of the academy. Whereas today, Black Studies is resisting displacement from the center of higher education and subsequent banishment back to the margins. To prevent this from happening, Black Studies must widen its appeal to the black students in/outside of higher education. According to Douglas and Peck (2013) references to blackness must remain diligent in not reducing or oversimplifying black people. Rebranding and expanding the field as welcoming to a community of heterogenous voices of African descent will require an active ground up strategy recruiting Black students from wider backgrounds into an active counter-public.

Fraser (1992) said counterpublics are ‘‘spaces of withdrawal and regroupment’’ and operate as ‘‘bases and training grounds for agitational activities directed toward wider publics’’ (p. 124). Black scholars and students should work together to identify the issues in the mainstream higher education publics that require scholarship to support their activist goals. Some of the issues that black students and scholars can begin to map as areas of concern are: 1. increasing student enrollment rates in Black Studies, 2. meeting the diverse needs of students in higher education by generating relevant scholarship and 3. Challenging grand narratives which attempt to dehumanize black students and essentialize them as stereotypes and monolithic communities. 

Reconstituting the field of Black Studies as a site of resistance and praxis during the post civil rights era will require multi-vocal scholarship (Bakhtin, 1995). By multi-vocal scholarship, I mean a more democratic inclusive accounting of black experiences. A multivocal discipline would allow for multiple narratives which include a broad range of student perspectives. This type of participatory practice might increase demand for the discipline, and act as a bulwark against further possible defunding (Rhodes, 2011). As higher education continues to supply less funding for humanities education programs like Black Studies, students and scholars of all backgrounds will need to advocate for its existence. To this point, Shockley (2011) said fragmentation along the border lines of black ethnic identity politics risks imperiling the viability of Black Studies to solve modern black problems.

In order to move beyond these institutional constraints, black scholars will need to make the case that the traditional civil rights framework is no longer sufficient to move the field of Black Studies forward or to serve its expanded community needs. Santos (2015) said “rearguard theory” is “craftsmanship rather than architecture, committed testimony rather than clairvoyant leadership and intercultural approximation to what is new for some and old for others” (p. 44). One way to validate this idea is to empower black students to make knowledge claims grounded in their own unique experiences and not in the high towers of the academy.

Conclusion

Black studies needs to be reconceptualized to meet the changing needs of the black student population in the post-civil rights era. Globalization, immigration, and intermarriage are trends that are changing black identity, and can no longer be ignored. Innovating new conceptual frameworks in the post-civil rights era is necessary for ensuring that a fuller picture is provided of black students' experiences in higher education. Otherwise, disregarding these trends pose an ominous future for the field of Black Studies and black students in higher education. 

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No Breakfast For the Children: A Concise History of the FBI’s War on the Black Panther Party

[Pictured: The Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Children Program in action, New York, 1969. Photo by Bev Grant/Getty Images]

By Samatha Pleasants

The first chapter of The Black Panther Party came out of Oakland, CA, in October 1966. From then on, the party spread like wildfire across the nation, from Oakland to New Haven, CT. The Oakland Chapter compiled the Black Panther Party Ten-Point Program, detailing the Black Panthers’ purpose and intentions. The program cites freedom, equal employment, equal opportunities, an end to capitalism, equal housing, exemption from military service, an end to police brutality, freedom for the incarcerated, etc. The party implemented social services, including The Free Ambulance Program, health clinics, The Black Panther Newspaper, youth institutes, and legal aid offices. Some of these, like The Children’s Free Breakfast Program, exist today. The Black Panther Party was not a fly-by-night organization. According to the Party’s own history: “The Black Panther Party at one point of time or another, between 1966 to 1971, had official chapters with the same name or affiliated organizations under other names in at least 61 cities in 26 states and the District of Columbia”.[1] The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) followed behind Black organizers quickly with a Counterintelligence Program initiative (COINTELPRO) to eradicate the potential threat of Black Nationalism. Though the BPP lasted into the 1980s, the FBI completed its objective by rendering them ineffective. The COINTELPRO was a multi-dimensional effort that was ultimately very successful in marginalizing the Black Panther Party from the populace of the United States without completely taking the party out.

The 1960s were a politically charged decade and a pivotal time for Civil Rights. Nearly a century after the ratification of the 13th Amendment, Black Americans still faced life-threatening prejudice. As the decade went on, the Civil Rights movement flourished. Uprisings across the country, from Detroit to Newark, spoke to the angry Black populous fighting for equality. Unrest in the community continued to grow, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's concern about organized revolution grew along with it. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the revisions made to the Civil Rights Act in 1968 were not enough of a gesture from the United States Government to rectify the injustices faced by the Black Population. This, in turn, created a more radical approach to gaining equality- the Civil Rights Movement shifted into Black Power. The FBI's greatest fear was Black leaders engendering a sense of freedom within their community. The Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) was a campaign conducted by the FBI and created by its director, J. Edgar Hoover, from 1956 to 1971. Through COINTELPRO, the FBI targeted groups that it deemed subversive. The FBI's goal was to dismantle these groups and to destroy their public perception as much as possible. The first group targeted by COINTELPRO was the U.S. Communist Party during the Red Scare of the 1950s. The program eventually expanded to target more groups during the 1960's. In August 1967, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover expanded the bureau's Counterintelligence Program to tackle Black Nationalism.

Did the FBI target the Black Panther Party because they were a "black extremist organization… advocating the use of violence and guerrilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government"[2]? Or was it actually because of their "free breakfast program," which FBI director J. Edgar Hoover feared brought about a sense of unity and strength in the Black Community? In the film A Huey P Newton Story, Roger Guenveur Smith states:

If you read the FBI files, you will see that even Mr. J. Edgar Hoover himself had to say that it was not the guns that were the greatest threat to the International security of the United States of America; it was not the guns, it was the Free Children's Breakfast Program that was the greatest threat to the international security of the United States of America. [3]

In 1971, a robbery conducted by the Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI led to a leak of the COINTELPRO files to the media. The backlash from politicians and the public caused the FBI to discontinue the Counterintelligence Program. Later, more information would be discovered through Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits filed by BPP members. Next came information obtained from federal agents who came forward and confessed their wrongdoings and involvement in the COINTELPRO. In 1976, the Senate formed a special Senate committee- The Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence (later nicknamed the "Church Committee"). Unfortunately, many documents from the COINTELPRO went unreleased, and parts of the documents released were blacked out. The investigation concluded that the FBI wrongfully targeted, surveilled, and violated the rights of average citizens.

The Black Panther Party experienced significant splits in 1971; from that point on, the party started to decline. According to political scientist Ollie A. Johnson: “From 1970-1974, the party changed from a large, decentralized, revolutionary organization to a small, highly centralized reformist group.”[4] All the chapters, besides Oakland, were shut down. Though the Black Panther Party went on into the early 1980s, the party as it was no longer existed. The FBI may not have diminished them entirely, but they crippled the Panthers so severely that the party could never recover- thereby achieving their goal. This was accomplished through consistent harassment, surveillance, covert operations that used illegal tactics and infiltration, multiple coalitions with local law enforcement, and reinforcement from the Panther's negative perception in the media.

Historiography

The Federal Bureau of Investigations’ Counterintelligence Program spanned from 1956 to 1971 and has remained controversial. The program involved the illegal surveillance of numerous U.S. citizens, covert and illegal operations, and the production of false narratives. The program, in turn, significantly impacted various political movements in the United States- especially the Civil Rights Movement. The FBI stated that “the purpose of this new counterintelligence program is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, and otherwise neutralize the activities of Black Nationalist organizations and groupings and their leadership, spokesmen, made, and supporters.”[5] The COINTELRO focused significantly on Black Liberation groups. This period of history has garnered substantial attention from historians due to its profound impact on groups like the Black Panther Party. Though the consensus of the program is that it had a negative effect, some historians argue that the program was not the cause of the demise of the BPP. Historians Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, for instance, argued that “To what extent federal counterintelligence measures may have contributed to the unraveling of… the Oakland Party in the 1970’s is difficult to determine.” [6] Also, most historians have concluded that, even after the exposure of COINTELPRO to the public, the general population still saw the FBI positively.

One of the first notable books on the topic is Racial Matters: the FBI's Secret War on Black America, 1960-1972, published in 1989. Author Kenneth O'Reilly received his Ph.D. in American history from Marquette University. He has published several books on the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is a professor specializing in 20th-century U.S. history. Chapter 8 and Chapter 9 of O'Reilly's book focus on the relationship between the FBI and the Black Panther Party. Here, O'Reilly tears into the FBI and its intentions with COINTELPRO, debunking the portrayal of the Bureau as one that made great strides toward racial justice. O’Reilly highlights the racist ideals that FBI director J Edgar Hoover shared with white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. O'Reilly’s take on President Johnson and his administration’s role in enabling the Bureau’s illegal actions, however, is confusing. This point was brought up in Robert Justin Goldstein’s review of O’Reilly’s book as “another example of overreaching”[7]. He asserts that Johnson enabled the FBI’s attacks on the Black Panther Party. O’Reilly states that Hoover and his aides "interpreted the president's obsession with militants and nationalists, and as well with those civil rights leaders who opposed the Vietnam war, as an Oval Office grant of authority to do whatever was necessary to neutralize them"[8]. Right after that,  O'Reilly admits that it is uncertain how much Lyndon B Johnson knew about the FBI's counterintelligence. Goldstein does agree with O’Reilly “that not only Johnson but John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon… were directly responsible for encouraging massive FBI intelligence gathering”. Goldstein and O’Reilly agree that the lack of control and supervision of the FBI puts much of the responsibility on these presidential administrations.  Though Goldstein’s review of O’Reilly’s work was not all praise, he gives credit where it is due, deeming this book as “the most comprehensive account yet published concerning the FBI and the civil rights movement” [9]. O’Reilly concludes that the nation's congressional leaders overwhelmingly favored the dismantling of Black Power groups and the jailing of their prominent members.

At the beginning of a review of O'Reilly's book, Steven F. Lawson agrees with O’Reilly’s assertion that, even after the exposure of the illegal and unethical Counterintelligence Program, the public still admired the FBI. Lawson seems to disdain J. Edgar Hoover, which is something to consider when reading the book review. Nevertheless, facts support his disdain concerning Hoover's character. He goes on to emphasize Hoover's fear of racial equality and his sympathizing with white supremacy groups.

O’Reilly notes the impact that Attorney General Clark had on the FBI's operations — adding another actor to the list of those who enabled the FBI’s mentions. Though Clark was not the most loved official by Hoover, he was a part of introducing surveillance to the United States government. According to the text, J. Edgar Hoover called Attorney General Clark "a coddler of crooks and Black terrorists and an enemy of law-and-order values."[10] Many people in Washington viewed Clark negatively. AG Clark supported recruiting informants, but Hoover clarified that he would do it on his terms. Once the "communist menace" was replaced with a new Black one, the FBI began targeting Black Power organizations. 

In 2001, Bettye Collier-Thomas and V.P. Franklin put together Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement- a compilation of separate essays. This book addresses the many instances where the FBI targeted an African American woman—going as far back as 1940 when the FBI targeted Ella Baker. In the essay "No One Ever Asks a Mans Roll in The Revolution," the author Tracey A Matthews mentions the BPP, highlighting the "competing gender ideologies"[11] within the Black Power Movement and the BPP. Not only did the party have external forces depleting them, but there were internal forces as well. The struggle with gender roles took its toll, and the FBI took advantage of any division it discovered within the party. Both Matthews and O'Reilly would agree that the Panther's various social programs, including the Free Children's Breakfast Program, horrified the FBI. The programs they implemented went neck and neck with the destruction campaigns implemented by the Bureau.  Matthews, like O'Reilly, discusses the importance of FBI destruction campaigns, like using informants to achieve their goal. These informants gathered information for the FBI and incited activity that would put the party at risk. Matthews states that "many of the FBI's activities against the Party were designed to undermine the free breakfast for children operations." The motive behind the FBI's covert operations were to destroy the party; it could not achieve its goal if the party were doing credible things for the community.

In 2011, Ryan J. Kirby wrote an article titled, “Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Community Activism and the Black Panther Party”. This article examines the activism of the Black Panther Party from 1966 to 1971, focusing on the relationship between the FBI and the BPP. 1968 was a big year for the party; the "Free Huey" campaign took the party from Oakland all across the country. The growth of the party and the surprising amount of support it engendered was a significant concern to the FBI. The larger the party got, the more the Counterintelligence Program expanded. The Bureau matched every move the party made. According to Kirby, in these four years, the COINTELPRO attacks on the BPP led to "violent confrontations, arrests, and fines that depleted the party's funds and strength."[12] This quote made me consider the primary sources I examined at Yale Sterling Memorial Library and the National Archives in D.C. The John R. Williams Papers contains subpoenas of the party's finances, and so do the congressional records in D.C. Kirby's article also mentions a point made in the Matthews's article from Sisters in the Struggle[13]- the party had internal issues that impacted them- they were hindered more by the FBI's interference.

Jakobi Williams published the book From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago in 2013. William’s is currently a professor in African American Studies and African diaspora at Indiana University. Williams dives into the tumultuous but significant relationship between the Chicago BPP (ILBPP- Illinois Black Panther Party) and the FBI. Williams and O’Reilly (among other historians) have come to the same conclusions about J. Edgar Hoover’s motives and his character. On page 172, Williams states that J. Edgar Hoover “disliked political leftists, believed in white supremacy, and aligned his position with U.S. elites to maintain blacks in subordinate economic positions.”[14] Where there is smoke, there is fire- most historians who have written about J. Edgar Hoover have articulated the same things.

William’s highlighting of the ILBPP allows for a new perspective of the party. Scholarship about the BPP was often centered around its Oakland chapter, putting the focus on Chicago adds more pieces to the puzzle. Williams credits the FBI's particular interest in the Chicago chapter to its leader, Fred Hampton. Due to the political climate in Chicago and across the nation, Chicago BPP concluded that partnering with the Black Stone Rangers (another Black Liberation group) would help increase their rank and file. One of the first things on the FBI's to-do list was to destroy the relationship between the Black Panthers and Black Stone Rangers in Chicago. Historians writing about COINTELPRO consistently bring up the FBI's strategy of causing strife within Black liberation movements to weaken them. Williams finds, like many others, that the interferences made by the FBI heightened the rift between the groups.

The book is perfectly separated into well-thought-out chapters breaking down the strategy the FBI, in partnership with law enforcement, used to dismantle the ILBPP. Chapter Five is titled Law Enforcement Repressions and the Assassination of Chairman Fred Hampton. The mention of using local media to help heighten the public’s fear of the party is a common theme in all of the sources cited so far- going back to O’Reilly’s book. At the chapter's start, Williams states, “Both the Chicago Police Department, intelligence arm, the Red Squad, and FBI agents enlisted the local media in efforts to discredit the Panthers.” [15] Williams emphasizes an essential fact about the relationship between the FBI and the local Chicago Police. Judson Jefferies raves in a book review about how Williams unpacked the BPP’s campaign against the Mayor of Chicago.[16] The relationship between the Mayor and the Chicago Police speaks to how deep the fight was to destroy the BPP. The fact is that the FBI could not complete the task alone, and it was not the only group that wanted something to be done about the Panthers. The protests at Chicago’s Democratic National Convention increased the Party’s attention. Williams refers to the mayor’s “stranglehold on political protest, the brutality of the city’s police force, and (though this did not come to light for many years) the city government’s infiltration of protest groups.”[17]

Though the FBI cooperated with various departments nationwide, their relationship with Chicago was profound. The Chicago police were thoroughly intertwined with the Bureau, as stated in the text, “to an extent not duplicated in any other city.”[18] The two forces worked closely together to deplete the BPP of their resources and instill fear and paranoia. Raids and arrests happened often, and the BPP did not have the money to back up the costs of bail or lawyers. Also, spending money on bail and lawyers meant less funding for their community programs.

As mentioned earlier, in 2013, Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr. wrote an informative study of the Oakland Party, discussing the impact of surveillance and COINTELPRO in particular. Bloom and Martin argue that the state's repression did not significantly impact the BPP in Oakland, or at least not to the degree that other historians thought. This take is not common, but the points made throughout the book are valid. For example, the party’s involvement with so-called enemies of the state and third-world nations greatly hindered them. However, this book fails to mention many key factors, as noted in a book review by Navid Farnia. Farnia states that they overlook the “ruthlessness of what Judson L. Jeffries calls the repressive government apparatus.”[19]

In 2020, Brian Mullgardt wrote an article in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-), further delving into the story of the ILBPP. Here, he quotes Bloom and Martin’s piece, citing their indecisiveness on the impact of COINTELPRO on the BPP. What stands out to in Mullgardt’s piece is his mention of COINTELPRO’s ineffectiveness in completing specific tasks. He explains ‘that the Panthers, along with the Puerto Rican organization the Young Lords and the white groups the Young Patriots and Rising Up Angry, formed the Rainbow Coalition in 1969, further indicating COINTELPRO’s ineffectiveness at sowing discord in Illinois.”[20]. That does not mean the Rainbow Coalition was a huge success- the coalition did not last, but its impact did. That is noted in Ana Durkin Keating’s review of Williams’s work. She mentions the importance of the book’s conclusion, looking at the lasting impact of the ILBPP-noting the Rainbow Coalition's effect on electing Chicago’s first Black mayor in 1983. [21]

Each monograph and essay examined reaffirms my choice of primary sources. These primary sources include the Freedom of Information Act, congressional records, first-hand accounts from Black Panthers and Bureau members, and newspaper articles. The only concern with the primary sources is the FOIA documents- some are hard to interpret due to the redacted pieces. However, that does not mean they aren't valuable. Even looking as far back as O'Reilly's book Racial Matters: the FBI's Secret War on Black America, 1960-1972 from 1989, most historians researching the topic used what they could from the Freedom-of-Information Act FBI documents. These files, combined with Congressional records, first-hand accounts, and newspaper articles, give a well-informed view of the strategies used by the FBI to dismantle the BPP.

Main Body

The FBI’s nationwide coalition with local law enforcement was its most potent COINTELPRO weapon. Black Panther Déqui Kioni-Sadiki asserts that the length and extent of the FBI's surveillance wasn't common knowledge, that "almost from its inception, J. Edgar Hoover  engaged in an undeclared and clandestine Counter Intelligence Program war- on the BPP in particular and on the whole Black Power Movement in general.”[22] By the end of 1967, the COINTELPRO Black Power initiative had commenced and was implemented with the help of police precincts across the country, from Oakland, CA, to New Haven, CT. Those in local law enforcement working alongside the FBI would be referred to in correspondence as SAC (special agents in charge). From the beginning of the creation of the Black Panther Party's first chapter in Oakland, CA, in 1966, the FBI was on its tail.

The released Counterintelligence Program records include memorandums, letters, "Airtels," and other forms of correspondence. An Airtel communication was to be sent the same day it was composed. Correspondence's being marked Airtel hinted at a sense of urgency. These communications were sometimes made between the Director of the FBI and SACs in various police offices across the country. By 1967, the COINTELPRO operation was in 43 cities across the United States. On February 29, 1968, an Airtel correspondence from G. C. Moore (FBI Associate Director) to William C. Sullivan (Assistant FBI Director, leader of domestic intelligence operations) affirmed that the program was in full force. The subject of the Airtel: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM /BLACK NATIONALIST-HATE GROUPS. Moore starts the Airtel by laying out the purpose of the initiative, "to extend the Counterintelligence Program designed to neutralize militant black nationalist groups from 23 to 41 field divisions to cover the great majority of black nationalist activity in this country". This Airtel was in reference to another Airtel sent on August 25, 1967, that held instructions regarding the COINTELPRO Black nationalist operation. At the time, the Airtel went to twenty-three different cities nationwide. Moore referred to the "tremendous increase in black nationalist activity," asserting that a sense of urgency needed to be behind the implementation of the FBI's COINTELPRO initiative. This Airtel established guidelines that the SACs should follow. One is that all SACs submit progress reports periodically and have any COINTELPRO initiatives approved before implementation. Though it is apparent looking through the records that these guidelines aren’t as stringent.

The post haste feel of the Airtel proved that the FBI was concerned. They no longer saw Black resistance as unorganized and lacking in leadership; they started to see it as an actual threat. How could it not be? The Black Panther Party had stretched across the country, coast to coast. They had legitimate parties in major cities like Chicago, IL, and Charleston, NC; the FBI was on top of the growing "problem." An Airtel dated March 4, 1968, from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to SAC Albany lists all the FBI field offices that were participating in the initiative to take down Black “extremist” groups. A few locations listed include Atlanta, GA; Baltimore, MA; Detroit, MI; Memphis, TN; Los Angeles, CA; New Orleans, LA; New York, NY. The Airtel stated that "the Counterintelligence Program is now being expanded to include 41 offices. Each office added to this program should designate an agent familiar with black nationalist activity… this agent will be responsible for the periodic progress letters being requested."  [23] The Airtel also laid out a list of goals set by the Bureau, which each field office was required to follow. Though the Black Panther Party wasn't the only Black Nationalist group on the FBI's radar, it was at the top of the list.

Another Airtel correspondence dated May 27, 1969, from J. Edgar Hoover to SAC, San Francisco, displays the blatant push to distort the image of the Black Panther Party. This Airtel was in response to another Airtel made to the Director by SAC, San Francisco, on May 14, 1969. One in which SAC San Francisco expressed their hesitance to pursue the Black Panther Party. The DOJ sees the BPP as a Black Nationalist group intending to overthrow the government; San Francisco disagreed, writing that though the Black Panther Party is seen as a subversive, violent organization, “there seems to be little likelihood of this.”  The director's response starts with a defensive tone, arguing that the Airtel sent by the San Francisco office expresses a negative outlook on COINTELPRO and is unacceptable to the Bureau, stating that “your (SAC, San Francisco) reasoning is not in line with Bureau objectives…”[24]. The Airtel starts with counterarguments to statements made by SAC, San Francisco. According to the Airtel, SAC, San Francisco was not urgently ensuring the FBI COINTELPRO objectives were met in their jurisdiction. Hoover then lists the various concerns the BPP poses to San Francisco and its surrounding area. Throughout the Airtel, the director continuously emphasized keeping the BPP away from "moderate" Black and white community members who might support them. Hoovers' next topic of concern was The Breakfast for Children Program. The FBI feared that The Breakfast For Children Program, a program that gave free food to children before they went to school, would likely appeal to moderate Black and white community members. This food wasn't only intended for Black and brown children, but it was also for poor white children. Hoover insists that The Breakfast for Children Program was developed with malicious intent. This implies that the Panthers conducted programs like this simply to build their public image and recruit youth for their cause. Hoover informed SAC, San Francisco, that their COINTELPRO operations needed re-evaluation. Suggesting that San Francisco pick other agents better suited for COINTELPRO operations. This correspondence made it clear that Hoover and the FBI had little tolerance for those in the COINTELPRO network questioning their orders and the motives behind them. From the beginning of the COINTELPRO Black Nationalist initiative, the goal was to establish a strong allegiance between the FBI and the SAC offices. Local police needed to prove their loyalty to the FBI and the COINTELPRO. These connections would play a key role in the FBI’s initiative and the ultimate downfall of the Black Panther Party.

The SAC at work: various cases from city to city

Different objectives made in cities nationwide by law enforcement were key to getting at the weak points of the Black Panther Party’s infrastructure.  At the end of Huey Newton's Revolutionary Suicide, he states, "A revolutionary party is under continual stress from both internal and external forces. By its very nature, a political organization dedicated to social change invites attack from the established order, constantly vigilant to destroy it." The FBI had the time, the resources, and the grit to continually attack and infiltrate the Black Panther Party at any chance it could get.

Fighting within political groups, especially ones garnered around the motivation of revolution, was inevitable. The FBI wanted to heighten their chances of things going awry within the confines of the Black Panther Party, so they strategized. Inserting informants and agent provocateurs was a standard method used by the FBI to infiltrate BPP chapters. Direct and indirect action from the FBI's COINTELPRO initiative weighed heavy on the party.

SAC, San Diego cites their accomplishments in an AIRTEL from August 20, 1969, "Shootings, beatings, and high degree of unrest continues to prevail in the ghetto area of Southeast San Diego although no specific counterintelligence action can be credited with contributing to this over-all situation, it is felt that a substantial amount of the unrest is directly attributed to this program…”[25] Straight from the horse's mouth, law enforcement took responsibility for destroying local communities through the COINTELPRO initiative. The Black revolutionaries of San Diego were victims of the FBI’s manipulation, which would lead to infighting and eventually the death of two of the BPP San Diego Chapter’s leaders.

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The FBI intended to destroy the morale of the BPP and its members; attacking leadership could have a domino effect. The FBI and local law enforcement knew it was necessary to get into the minds of the youth. This was made evident in an Airtel from SAC, San Francisco, stating that "The Negro youth and moderate must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teaching, they will be dead revolutionaries." The Black Panther Party was being made an example of by local and federal law enforcement. Many BPP members were incarcerated, some of whom remained behind bars for a long time. Being tangled up in the carceral system was mentally and physically exhausting and a great way to deplete morale. It was also a way to rob the party of their funding stashed away for community purposes.

From its formation, the BPP saw the FBI as an immediate threat which had no mercy.  Former Panther Sundiata Acoli (former Panther) recalls the beginning of the COINTELPRO initiative against the BPP in "An Updated History of the New Afrikan Prison Struggle" from the book Look For Me in The Whirlwind. Acoli writes:

It began with the mass arrest of Lumumba Shakur and the New York Panther 21. It followed with a series of military raids on the Black Panther Party offices in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Haven, Jersey City, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Omaha, Sacramento, and San Diego, and was capped off with an early-morning four-hour siege that poured thousands of rounds into the Los Angeles BPP office.[26]

Chicago, Illinois

The case of the Black Panther Party in Chicago exemplifies the devastating tactics used in COINTELPRO. An Airtel, from the FBI Director to SAC, Chicago, gives the SAC office authority to carry out an operation they detailed to the FBI. The letter states, "Authority is granted" for the mailing of anonymous letters, a tactic often used by the SAC offices. The bureau directed the SAC office to "utilize a commercially purchased envelope for this letter and ensure that the mailing is not traced to the source.”[27] Informants were to take every step to ensure that no one suspected law enforcement of composing the letters. That letter was for Black Stone Rangers leader Jeff Fort, another Black community organization founded in Chicago . The bureau hoped this letter would create strife between the Black Stone Rangers and the BPP. Fred Hampton’s willingness and intention to work with other organizations scared the FBI and bogus letters like this prevented those coalitions that Fred Hampton hoped to form and ruined those the BPP already had.  After the letters were sent, the conflict between both parties arose, and there was no hope of working with the Black Stone Rangers. Using this tactic, along with others, dissolved Fred Hampton’s dream of a “rainbow coalition,” giving the Bureau what it wanted.

Like fake letters, informants were frequent during the height of the COINTELPRO objective. The most notable use being with William O’Neal in Chicago, IL. O’Neal was the informant who infiltrated the Chicago Black Panther Party in 1969, leading to the death of revered leader Fred Hampton. FBI informants did not follow any code of conduct- the mission was for them to get as much information as possible and hopefully cause some trouble in the process. Fred Hampton's case was gruesome and unjustifiable, but a great example of the extent to which the FBI went to achieve its goals. You can see the threat he posed to the FBI just by looking at the files dedicated to Fred Hampton. In the FOIA COINTELPRO records, Fred Hampton Part 1 file is compiled of 100 pages. [28] The file includes newspaper articles around the death of Fred Hampton, transcripts from a news conference held by the Maywood Human Relations Commission, Airtel’s, and other records.

The FBI informant William O’Neal tells his story in The Eyes on the Prize series documentary.  [29] William O’Neal became an FBI informant after a run-in with the law. O’Neal and a friend stole a car, drove around Chicago, and left to visit a relative out of state. They stopped at a pool hall, where visitors were required to leave their names and addresses. After playing a few games, the gentlemen left the pool hall, got into an accident outside, and fled. They managed to get back to Chicago, and "about three, four months later," O’Neal was contacted by FBI agent Roy Mitchell. Mitchell let O’Neal know that the FBI knew of the accident in the stolen car, playing a game of cat and mouse back and forth with O’Neal for several minutes. Mitchell assured O’Neal that though his lies weren't believable, he had nothing to worry about- if he helped him out. Something is troubling about the circumstances O’Neal faced- a man encounters legal issues, and the police approach him with a quid pro quo situation to buy his freedom. In the interview, O’Neal details the authority that Chicago’s SAC gave him. He explained that FBI agent Roy Mitchell "gave me a lot of room, a lot of leash, in order to be a Panther. He wanted me to become a Panther before I became an FBI agent."[30] The tone in O’Neal’s voice throughout the interview and the constant self-assurance that he was not responsible for the assassination of Fred Hampton spoke to his guilt.

O’Neal got close to the party, gained its members' trust, and obtained secrets vital to the Chicago PD's operations. O’Neal became Hampton’s bodyguard and eventually the head of BPP security in Chicago. He was so close to Fred Hampton that he was able to create a map of Hampton's home. This map considered every detail, from the purpose of each room down to the location of furniture. Chicago PD used this to plan the assassination, disguised as a so-called arms raid of Fred Hampton’s residence on December 3, 1969. That evening, O’Neal drugged Hampton, assuring that he would be subdued during the planned raid. Finally, at 4 am the Chicago PD busted into the Hampton residence, achieving their goal of killing Fred Hampton.

California to Connecticut

The case of Ericka Huggins exemplifies how depleting it was to be a part of the Black Panther Party and constantly under the microscope of the FBI. Huggins is known for participating in the New Haven, CT chapter. But, Huggins roots are in Los Angeles, where she lived with her husband, Jon Huggins. Huggins was murdered, not directly by the FBI or any informants, but he did die due to the FBI’s actions through their COINTELPRO initiative. The bureau had clandestine, indirect ways of getting what it wanted. In an Airtel communication from SAC, Los Angeles, to the FBI Director, SAC agents lay out operations "under consideration."[31] The operations bore a resemblance to those implemented in Chicago. The Airtel discusses a series of anonymous letters that the SAC office will send out—one to the BPP from a member of the US organization (a rival Black nationalist organization). The letter would go on to state that members of the group US are aware of "plans" that the BPP had to kill their leader, Ron Karenga. SAC, Los Angeles, hoped this would "result in a US and BPP vendetta." [32] Next, a letter was sent to the party's donor, The Peace and Freedom Party (PFP). The intention of the letter was for the PFP to cut ties with the BPP. The letter warned that "when the armed rebellion comes, the whites in the PFP will be lined up against the wall with the rest of the whites."[33] The anonymous letter would indefinitely cause a stir and cripple the relationship that both organizations had.  This was proven on January 17, 1969, when Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and Jon Huggins were killed by members of the US. A tragedy that would forever tarnish the relationship between both groups and reassured the FBI that their initiative was working.

As stated before, BPP leader Ericka Huggins moved to New Haven after her husband's death to be close to his family.   June 4, 1971, an Airtel was sent to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from SAC, New Haven[34].  A monthly summary from New Haven, reporting to headquarters and keeping everyone updated. Part 1 of the summary lists the informants involved in SAC New Haven operations, but the actual list is deleted from the file. Here, the informants laid out every piece of information they received from their deceptive fieldwork. The document included the branch's name, national leaders, local leaders, headquarters location, and support groups. They knew everything the party and its members did, down to the last detail. In that same Airtel, SAC New Haven lists the party's "public appearances," mainly referring to their various demonstrations, how unorganized they were, how many people were in attendance, etc. The case of the New Haven Black Panthers involved Ericka Huggins and Bobby Seale. Both Panthers were charged with conspiracy involving the murder of Alex Rackley in 1969 after a tape of Huggins interrogating the victim was released. The trial was less than a year long, from October 1970 to May 1971, but Huggins was imprisoned for two years. Due to the controversy surrounding the case, the jury selection process was the most prolonged in the history of Connecticut. Ericka was in prison, away from a tiny baby, as well as dealing with the death of her husband- living in a mentally exhausted state. This was all intentional- everything worked out as planned.

In an Airtel, the New Haven SAC mentioned the release of Ericka Huggins on May 25, 1971, "the case against the Panthers was dismissed, and ERICKA HUGGINS was immediately freed.” [35] Though Huggins was freed, it did not take away the trauma that she endured throughout the process. The work became grueling and the continual interaction with law enforcement was life-altering. Another Airtel from SAC New Haven from June 11, 1971, contains a transcript from a telephone conversation. This conversation shows the very real impact all this legal trouble had on the Black Panther Party. Panther Millie Farmer calls George Edwards in the transcript, stating that she "exhausted all of her sources in New Haven" [36] and needed to borrow $380 before the 15th when she goes to a court hearing. The FBI's plan was working; they were exhausting the members of the BPP in every way possible. All those involved in the COINTELPRO initiative knew it was necessary to get into the minds of the youth. In a correspondence to the FBI, SAC San Francisco stated that, "The Negro youth and moderate must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teaching, they will be dead revolutionaries." Many BPP members were incarcerated, some of whom remained behind bars for quite some time. Dealing with the carceral system is exhausting and a great way to deplete morale. It is mentally and physically exhausting and could rob a party of a good portion of their funding stashed away for community purposes.

North Carolina

The case of The Black Panther Party in North Carolina also speaks directly to the FBI's devastating impact. So, it seems that wherever a chapter popped up, the FBI followed. SAC Charlotte reported back to the FBI that on April 21, 1969, a man (whose name was deleted) from Greensboro contacted the BPP in Oakland to get the okay to form their own chapter. The Oakland chapter gave them “no authority at this time to organize”. [37] On May 8, 1969, SAC, Charlotte contacted the FBI Director via Airtel. The Airtel states that after reviewing information through investigation, they had determined “that a charter has not been issued to a Black Panther unit in North Carolina... informants report that the Charlotte, N.C., and Greensboro, N. C. Both have hopes of receiving charters…” [38] There is another COINTELPRO correspondence in this FBI file where the sender and receiver have been blacked out. However, the correspondence starts by informing us that on May 21, 1969, posters were being passed around Charlotte. The next page of the file contains a copy of the flyer for a rally that will last from 12 to 4 pm at a restaurant called Chicken and Ribs. The flyer cited the organizers as “Citizens of the Black Community who are interested in organizing. A Black Panther Party”[39]. The FBI knew every single move of Black organizers, whether they were officially affiliated with the Black Panther Party or not.

In a memorandum on August 25, 1969, the FBI in Charlotte stated that "this group (Afro-American Unity Organization) has since the fall of 1968 been unsuccessfully attempting to affiliate nationally with the Black Panther Party… advised that this group even though they are not affiliated nationally with the BPP do wear the garb of the BPP and study from books supplied by the BPP.”[40]  The purpose of the memorandum is to investigate the possibility of a BPP chapter being formed, due to a meeting of "the potential BPP" in Charlotte. That is six months of investigation, and there is still no assurance of any affiliation. Nevertheless, the SAC office was established in Charlotte; the agents began documenting every single step made by those active in Charlotte. Even if they weren't affiliated, this proactiveness on the part of the FBI put them one step ahead.

The FBI North Carolina Files are extensive; the focus isn’t just on one city in North Carolina. Greensboro, Charlotte, and Winston-Salem are the three cities most frequently mentioned. On the FOIA archive, there is a section listed as “Black Panther Party, Winston Salem, NC.” some of these are duplicate files as the ones in the FBI vault and on the Internet Archive website.[41] In Part 01 file, a document details the BPP’s activity in North Carolina. In the heading of this document, it says UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION. Bellow that title says, “copy to:” and then lists several army bases. The report of date lists SA, something blacked out, May 23, 1969. The next page lists a table of Contents and Part 1 is Charlotte. Subsection A starts on page 4, titled Organizational Activities and Connections with the Black Panther Party Headquarters, Berkley, California. First notation, December 13, 1968, an individual (name blacked out) had recently contacted the BPP headquarters in Oakland, referring to themself as a member of the Charlotte-based group Afro-American Unity Organization. The person was inquiring about affiliating with the Black Panther Party, stating that he was told “it would be necessary for him to forward the amount of $300.00 to the national headquarters so that a representative of the national office… could travel to Charlotte, North Carolina, to indoctrinate the new members”.[42] Further on in the document it states that on December 30, a blacked-out name advised that Jerome Clifton Johnson, known as “The Fox” held a meeting at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, claiming to be a member of the Black Panther Party.[43] This subsection of the document concludes that Jerome Johnson wasn’t able to “establish affiliation with the BPP of California”. Apparently, the reasoning behind the delay in receiving national accreditation is due to “a purge being conducted within the national party to get rid of informants and undesirable characters.”[44] It was confirmed on May 13, 1969, that Charlotte did not have a “charter group of the BPP”. The paranoia and fear that came over BPP members indicated that the FBI’s strategies were hard at work. This made it clear that the constant interference from law enforcement hindered the party’s expansion and ultimately trust with one another. Without a strong rank and file, the BPP had nothing.

Local police thoroughly documented the activities of anyone associated with the BPP.   Looking to correspondence from SAC, Charlotte, to the FBI director labeled 5:31 PM URGENT, stamped for March 17, 1969, though the incident detailed occurred on February 8. The agent composing the letter goes on to describe a “plot to bomb” a local market by the Black Panthers in Greensboro. Even if there is no evidence to back up claims, the SAC office delivers the claims to the bureau. The very first sentence of the correspondence is blacked out. Still, the following sentence says “members of the Black Panther Party (BPP), Greensboro, NC are discussing the possibility of bombing the Thrifty Curb Market in Greensboro NC”.  No matter who did it, if it talked like a Panther and walked like a Panther, the FBI was on top of them. The surveillance that came along with the COINTELPRO initiative was constant and excessive.

New York, NY

The Collective Autobiography of the New York 21 (1971) gives great insight into the extent of the harassment the Black Panther Party faced at the hands of local law enforcement and the FBI. The Case is one of great significance; not only did it deplete the resources of the New York Panthers, but it also tarnished the relationship between the New York Panthers and the National Chapter (Oakland, CA). The New York 21 trial was one of the costliest New York had seen at the time and quickly became a prominent topic in the media. According to Déqui Kioni-Sadiki the expensive and prolonged trial was "never about justice or protecting people or places from Panthers allegedly conspiring to harm or destroy them”[45] The group known as the New York Panther 21 had been charged with an array of crimes, 186 counts including attempted arson and conspiracy to blow up police precincts, schools, and other locations, including the New York Botanical Garden[46] It seemed that "almost the entire" Harlem-Bronx chapter of the party was tied up in the web. On May 13, 1971, the jury found those Black Panthers not guilty. This might seem like a win for the BPP, but the impact of the trial left a more significant mark.

The legal issues that the New York chapter faced led to a need for more support for incarcerated members. They called on the national leadership to step up and aid their chapter- unfortunately, Oakland did not answer their calls for help. The New York chapter did not appreciate the lack of support they received from Oakland and parted ways from them in 1971. Slowly, the cracks in the party became bigger and bigger, breaking up coalitions and giving the FBI what it wanted.

The Committee on Internal Security of the United States House of Representatives Hearings on the Black Panther Party

Another outcome of the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign was formal House of Representative investigations into the Black Panther Party- these did not help the Party maintain its durability and optimism. In 1970, The Committee on Internal Security of the House of Representatives held a series of hearings concerning various chapters of the BPP. On Tuesday, March 3, 1970, the committee started its investigation discussing the Kansas City Chapters and its activities. Day two was led by Chairman, Representative Richard H. Ichard. He begins by discussing claims of the party’s activity (referring to the press) and the contradictory claims from The Black Panther Party and its supporters. Ichard states that “It's effects and supposed successes in the communities throughout the Nation, the amount of police work that has been consumed because of it, and the attention it has been afforded by the press seems to me to be inordinately disproportionate to the size of the Black Panthers.[47] Representative Ichard points out that the party did not present a significant threat. Then why the hearings? Though the party appeared unorganized and small in scale, the hearings alone prove that the BPP posed a threat. Unfortunately, false narratives about the party ignited the fear held by many Americans at the time. This lead to local representatives taking action under the pressure of their constituents.

The revolutionary vocabulary and statements used by Black Panther leaders rubbed many people the wrong way. Richard explains his reasoning for voting yes for the investigation, citing the Panther’s 10-point program as a concern. He continues to assert that though the words of Panther leaders could be rhetoric, there is enough evidence around those words that they pose a threat; “… In view of these statements and in view of the depth of specific and comprehensive data and in order to ascertain if there are deficiencies in the law which are in need of remedy. Order to permit society to contend to such organizations, this committee has authorized an investigation and hearings.”[48] What Representative Ichard said next really strikes a chord. If the Federal Government was responsible for keeping law and order in Kansas City, "then we (the United States) must have a national police force. Very few people in the Congress, very few people in this Nation, want a national police force."[49] The mention of this concern reassures the fact that Congress, to a certain extent, was aware of the FBI's plans. Nevertheless, the local government was taking its own measures to examine the party and its intentions. Probing the Black Panther Party, subpoenaing witnesses, and collecting evidence "until we are satisfied that enough is known to make an intelligent evaluation.”

In part two of the hearings, the committee examined the Seattle, WA, chapter of the BPP. This was referred to as a “continuation of the series of hearings concerning the Black Panther Party.” [50] The committee subpoenaed witnesses who would testify, along with committee investigators. Representative Richardson Preyer of North Carolina proclaimed that these testimonies pertained to the BPP Seattle chapter and “the general reaction of the Seattle community to the Black Panther Party”[51] The community’s perception was key for the Black Panther’s survival, if the community did not show support success would be hard to achieve. The first witness is a special investigator from the Seattle Police Department. Officer Porter concluded that the Black Panther Party in Seattle was dying off, and turnout was dropping. He estimated that the chapter’s membership decreased from around “12 to 15” to “8 to 11” members.  The officer blames this decline in membership on the party’s radicalism, stating, “They felt that the party had nothing to offer them. To quote several of those youngsters, they didn’t feel like going to a meeting and listening to lectures and studying out of Chairman Mao’s “red book”. This is a bold statement, without actual evidence but his account and estimations. Knowing how corrupt the police were when dealing with the BPP, these words don’t hold as much weight. Representative Ichord asked the same question, “How do you know that?”. He wants to know how accurate the testimony of this officer is. The officer also credits the various arrests, charges, and convictions that party members have received as another reason why membership declined.

Part three of the hearings lasted from July 21, to the 24. In this hearing, the committee examined three cities: Detroit, MI, Philadelphia, PA, and Indianapolis, IN. Representative Pryor states that “the subjects that we will inquire into today relate to the history, the origin, the organization, character, the objectives, and activities of the Black Panther Party.”[52] Three of the four witnesses were formally BPP members, one from either of the three cities. The fourth is the Philadelphia Police Sergeant. The first witness was from Detroit. Representative Pryror asked a variety of questions regarding the promotion and education of self-defense. The party’s use of weapons and self-defense courses worried U.S. officials. Berry recalled the death of the BPP's defense captain being the reason that the chapter briefly closed. Though he was not present, he recalls what was conveyed to him- stating that he was killed in a Black Panther home with twelve other members present. Calls from the Chicago chapter, which held seniority over Detroit, pressured the party to disperse. Berry asserts that though the death of the captain was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Black Panther Party is no longer in Detroit for various reasons. Barry painted a clear picture of the BPP as a corrupt, unorganized, and violent organization. According to Barry, Chief of Staff (BPP Chicago chapter), David Hilliard contacted him after hearing that the BPP was still active in Detroit. Berry claimed that Hilliard threatened him, “he told me that we could get in trouble for posing as Panthers because there were no Black Panthers in Detroit.” Those left of the BPP in Detroit who still wanted to organize created, what Berry refers to as, an organizing branch titled The National Committee to Combat Fascism. Berry never joined that branch, and by his testimony, it was clear the biases he had toward radical dissent. Barry bragged about his harmony with law enforcement; then he claimed that the national party called him “chicken.” These claims help paint the narrative that the BPP is corrupt and violence prone. The three witnesses being former Panthers make those testimony’s biased- they separated from the party for a reason, there was going to be negative feedback. Therefor, these testimonies would not represent the party fairly.

Part four, the final part of the Congressional hearings, involved an examination of the National Office and of the Des Moines, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska branches of the BPP. These hearings took place on October 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15 and November 17 of 1970. Representative Richardson Preyer, again, started by stating that the hearigs were a “continuation of hearings concerning the Black Panther Party”. [53] But, more specifically, he states that the purpose of this fourth part of the hearings is” to develop information on the activities and objectives of the national office of the Black Panther Party” emphasizing statements made by the party about “revolutionary violence” that emanated from “national leaders or printed in the Black Panther Party newspaper”. They would like to conclude, are these statements simply rhetoric? Or is the BPP the real deal, ready to take “revolutionary action”? Again, one of the witnesses is a former Black Panther. Another is Quinn Tamm, executive director of the International Association of Chiefs of Police; Sheriff Frank Madigan, Alameda County sheriff’s office, representing the National Sheriffs Association; and John J. Harrington, national president of Fraternal Order of Police.[54] Representative Preyer believed that these witnesses, “representing three levels of local law enforcement, are in an excellent position to relate to the committee the problems facing the local law enforcement officers in this area and discuss the need for Federal legislation”. It seems that speaking only to law enforcement is biased, showing one side of the argument and not that of the BPP. The first witness called is Investigator Robert M. Horner, chief investigator for the Committee on Internal Security. Investigator Horner answers most of the representatives’ questions in great detail- laying out the activities of the BPP, related groups, affiliated groups, the number of members, the percentage of female members, the age group of the average leader, etc. Then he goes on to state that, “thirty-six out of forty-two groups reported upon were said to have been in possession of firearms” and that “seventeen groups having active chapters and five having inactive chapters were reported to have been in possession of explosives.” Each of those statements was made with no examples nor evidence presented.

Investigator Horner then mentions that “most cities reported that the relationship between the police and the Negro communities is good; that community support of the Panthers is small; and that few, if any, benefits have accrued to the Negro communities through the efforts of the Black Panthers.” The information that the investigator presented was acquired through surveys. These surveys were based upon inquiries directed to seventy-seven law enforcement agencies with active BPP chapters in their jurisdiction. There are going to be biased responses.

The witness, Mr. De Patten, was a former Black Panther as a member of both the Des Moines and Kansas City Chapter. He refers to his actions after joining the BPP, how he came up “with some off the wall theory of marching downtown, destroying it..[55]” Though this is a former member, he wasn’t as dismissive of the BPP belief system as the BPP member cited in the Seattle hearing.  Patten began to describe how he was taught to deal with “right-wingers” when out in public, representing the BPP. He detailed an incident when a white woman came up to him, behaving erratically, stating that she is a “poor white working woman and that they are doing everything for those black people; they even passed a law in Kansas where if they rioted and robbed the stores, nothing would happen to them. I didn’t know anything about any such law and I still don’t.. I told her if she was a white working woman, then we should ally ourselves; that she should be my normal ally… because we were talking about not a race struggle, we were talking about a class struggle…” Patten articulated that, by speaking to her and relating their struggles, he got her to listen. The questioning continued, as if Representative Romines did not want to hear that response; that wasn’t enough to make the party look bad.

The representative continued to question the former Panther. He hounded him about the existence of a BPP in Des Moines, whether it was actually disbanded, and if the National Chapter was the one that ordered the disbanding. He then asked a couple of questions, to which the witness outright said that he “isn’t sure” in response. For example, when representative Romines says, “You made the statement that the des moines Black Panther chapter wanted to relate more on a hard-core community level, is that right?” But, he told Representative Rominespreviously that he “believe(d), they wanted to relate more on a cultural level; that is from my understanding. I have not been to Kansas City, I don’t know for sure about Kansas City”[56]. However, the representative is taking these statements as truth, and in no way does he fact-check these responses. These investigations and those statements made so matter-of-factly applied more pressure on the Black Panther Party.

The media as a catalyst of negative public perception

The mainstream media played an essential role in assisting the FBI in its plan to destroy the Black Panther Party. Though the newspaper articles were not being put out directly by the FBI, it was clear what side the mainstream media resided on. Yes, there were underground revolutionary periodicals like the Black Panther Newspaper, which spoke on the oppression that the party faced at the hands of the police. Despite that, the public was mostly fed negativity concering  the BPP. During the congressional hearing on the Investigation of the Black Panther Party's Kansas City Chapter Representative Ichard addressed those in attendance, stating that "a great number of my colleagues in the House have expressed concerns about the intentions and the capabilities of the Black Panther Party. Citizens throughout the country, and my own constituency included, have been alarmed by press accounts of open incitement to kill, destroy, and revolt.”[57] The constant outpouring of horror stories surrounding the actions and motives of the Black Panther Party plagued public perception.

The New York Times

The New York Times played a role in perpetuating a negative narrative of the Black Panther Party. April 8, 1969, The New York Times published an article titled "Former Members Liken Black Panthers to the Klan". In 1969, The New York Times had 800,000 subscribers. It has been a major news outlet since its founding in 1851.[58]  The black Panther Party was covered by other major newspapers like the Chicago-Sun Times, The Seattle Times, etc. People were reading what was being put out about the party- good or bad, those articles shaped public opinion. The New York Times in particular, whether they knew it or not, played a major role in the public's ongoing fear of the Black Panthers.

Even mainstream media that incorporated the Black Panthers voice in news story’s still inserted police propaganda into the mix. Before the assassination of Fred Hampton, The New York Times published an article titled "Panther Toll Is Now 28" regarding the Chicago Panther's chapter. The start of the article relays a cry out from the Chicago Black Panthers, delivering to the public their claims of a "national conspiracy to wipe out their leadership and destroy their organization."  [59]  The article then goes on to make some obvious and somewhat pointless statements- reinforcing that the audience knows the Black Panthers are “Black” and what type of attire they sport. Once that is over, the journalist lists the Chicago Black Panther's Death Toll, the latest being on January 1, 1968. Twenty-eight people dead, that's quite the toll on a small organization that is up against local police and the federal government of a world superpower. But then, the article shifts to the point of view of the police officers involved in the murders, describing the last shootout as a "furious gun battle which ensued after a woman opened up on the officers with a shotgun." [60] Generally, police across the country were revered as respectable and honest citizens who kept communities safe. In 1968, Gallup took a survey and found that seventy-seven percent of Americans had respect for the police[61]They would be more likely to take the word of one officer over that of a group of radical Black Nationalists.

In New York City, May 1968, the Fillmore East Theater set the stage for a Black Panther Benefit Performance. This Benefit was detailed in a New York Times article on May 22, 1968, titled Black Panthers Stage a Benefit: 3 Theater Troupes Perform to Aid 7 Jailed Members. The journalist Dan Sullivan starts off by describing the event as "a rhetoric composed of racial paranoia, political jargon, Utopian idealism, unprintable threats, gutty 'soul' talk and shrewd humor"[62]  He was very careful about how he spoke regarding the police, the FBI, and local government. Though the author holds nothing back when delivering his opinions about the Black Panther Party from a self-proclaimed "mild-mannered white liberal". Sullivan referred to the event as a "depressing indication of just how deep the chasm between the white community and the militant black community really is."   [63] Now, what does that even mean? What about the gap between the white community and the Black community in general? There continued to be a push to separate the Black Panther Party from the Civil Rights movement- labeling them as a rogue and radical Black Nationalist group with a separate agenda. That narrative is what made it easier for "mild-mannered white liberals" to condemn the actions of the Black Panther Party but support the actions of peaceful civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. The article went on to use language that was guaranteed to scare the white populous, quoting speeches calling "white men … 'devils'… Policeman  was 'Gestapo pigs'… the Black Panther Party 'hates you, white people".[64] Wording like this fed the propaganda machine which influenced the majority of the American. As stated in the article, for "civil libertarians”, the arrest of the 'Panther 21' appeared to be a case of the government engaging in preventive, political detention and ignoring due process.[65] After word of the Bernstein’s support got to law enforcement, they became a target of the FBI's smear campaign, using the media as their catalyst. They were painted as villains, making a mockery of those who were "actually" fighting for civil rights and equality. As stated in The New York Times,

“Emergence of the Black Panthers as the romanticized darlings of the politico-cultural jet set is an affront to the majority of black Americans. ...The group therapy plus fund-raising soirée at the home of Leonard Bernstein... represents the sort of elegant slumming that degrades patrons and patronized alike. It might be dismissed as guilt-relieving fun spiked with social consciousness, except for its impact on those blacks and whites seriously working for complete equality and social justice. It mocked the memory of Martin Luther King Jr…."[66]

Media on behalf of the Black Panther Party

The Worker, considered a communist newspaper, appealed to a very niche group ofpeople and often published articles about the Black Panther Party. On June 28, 1968, The Worker released an article titled “Demand Fair Jury For Huey Newton.” The article mentioned a group of white liberals who were raising money for Huey, the Huey P. Newton Defense Committee, once known as “Honkies for Huey.” That group of white people were quote, “also involved in fundraising and educational programs in the white community.” This was the fear of the Bureau coming true- the Black Panther Party was infiltrating the surrounding white communities through their white liberal supporters. Fear of underground media use was apparent in an Airtel from FBI Director to SAC San Francisco on May 27, 1969. Director Hoover stated that “activities of the BPP have reached the black and white communities as evidenced by their weekly newspaper, which has reached a circulation of 45,000.”[67]

The Black Panther Party’s coalition with the white left was one of the reasons Stokely Carmichael left the party, but he did not oppose the coalition for the same reason that the FBI did. Carmichael not only saw organizing with whites as an off-kilter approach, but he thought it was not wise to seek out their support in any way. Carmichael noted that being friendly with white folks, radical or liberal, had its faults. Especially in terms of dealing with the white press. In his book Ready for a Revolution, Carmichael writes that “Ramparts began to run features on the Panther leadership and proclaimed the party the ‘revolutionary vanguard.’ The establishment media followed suit, presenting the Panthers as the militant black wing of the American youth rebellion, the black shock troops of the white New Left and the ‘counterculture’… whether it’s the left’s revolutionary fantasy or the right’s racist nightmare: angry young Negroes with guns”.[68] Various articles from the height of the Black Panther Party’s tenure support Carmichaels argument. Look as far back as December 6, 1968.  The New York Times put out an article from San Francisco titled “Black Panthers Growing, but Their Troubles Rise”. Earl Caldwell is the journalist who wrote the article, starting off by observing a storefront that the “Black Panther movement occupies.”[69] He goes on to describe the ongoings outside of the store- the “noisy teen-aged youths” that were “hustling newspapers”. It is important to look at the language Caldwell used. Instead of referring to them as “noisy” teens, he could have said “energetic young people”; instead of “hustling,” he simply could have used the term “selling.” Unfortunately, that specific wording would help paint a negative narrative for the public. During the field investigation done for the article, Caldwell stopped and asked a random man about the Panther’s activity on that block; the man replied, “You’re damn right they sell a lot of those papers…a lot of people are afraid not to buy it…”. Again, this is another example of Caldwell painting a narrative. Though these words did not come out of Caldwell’s mouth, he chose to publish them.

Conclusion

By the end of 1971, the damage had already been done- irreversible events that had a long-lasting impact transpired. The harassment from police, along with internal party struggles, backlash in the media, and loss of resources, began to take its toll on the Party. As Dhoruba Bin Wahad writes in Excluding the Nightmare after the Dream, “resources were depleted, and programs cut back due to the relentless overt and covert police attacks and prosecutions.”[70] In just two years, from December 1967 to December 1969, the Black Panther Party put out over two hundred thousand dollars in bail for members[71]. The ruthlessness of the FBI and local law enforcement tactics created hostile environments, with party members constantly on edge. The funding collected by the party was being used for legal aid and survival instead of implementing community programs. Every time the BPP made a step forward, the actions of the FBI and local law enforcement set them two steps backward. The actions and motives of the police appeared to be endorsed by the mass media, which aided the COINTELPRO efforts. The Black Panther Party was not immune to the tricks of the media, even after adapting to the art of propaganda. According to former Panther Acoli Sundiat, “too many Panthers fell into the habit of making boisterous claims in the public media…”[72] Members were losing patience and became emboldened when being interviewed- often writing checks they couldn’t cash and making promises to the public that were unrealistic, thereby bringing down morale and community support. It is safe to say that 1971 was the year that the Black Panther Party ceased to exist as it was. They started to see a very swift drop in numbers, and people were becoming less and less enamored with the revolution; as Sundiat stated in a brief History of the BPP, “COINTELPRO eventually intimidated and corrupted all three of the BPP’s top leaders: Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver. Each, in his way, caved into the pressures and began acting in a manner that was designed deliberately to destroy the BPP.” [73]

The COINTELPRO initiative was finally exposed, thanks to a group known as the Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI. [74] They managed to steal an assortment of the COINTELPRO files from an FBI office in Media, PA. They then gave these files to the media. The backlash the FBI faced led to an official “dismissal” of the program. However, the FBI continued operations not under the official COINTELPRO name from 1972 to around 1974.  This is apparent from the countless COINTELPRO documents from after 1971. For example, in the FBI Vault Black Panther Party Part 30 of 34, an Airtel is sent from SAC, Charlotte, to the FBI director concerning “Black Panther Party Finances and Extremist Matters,” dated August 21, 1972. [75]People started coming forward and talking, especially former agents and informants with stories from inside the COINTELPRO. Irreversible damage had been done to citizens who now intended to hold the bureau accountable in court. Finally, in 1976, the Church Committee concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation wrongfully targeted, surveilled, and violated the rights of average citizens. Also, after the hearings, the Senate created The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to provide “vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States.”[76] After, in 1977, The House of Representatives created the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Even after the end of the COINTELPRO, the pieces left of the BPP crumbled. As stated by former BPP member Sekou Odinga, “The illegal Counterintelligence Program of the U.S. government seemed so effective that work above ground was no longer strategic. We couldn’t work under the banner of the Black Panther Party, which was at war with itself.”[77] The Black Panther Party as it was had disappeared, and though COINTELPRO was put to an abrupt stop, they accomplished what they set out to. Eventually, the Church Committee hearings concluded wrongdoing and condemned the actions of the FBI through the illegal COINTELPRO operation. However, no formal investigation has been implemented to hold the federal government accountable.

There have been no investigations into the criminal convictions, and there have been no attempts to free “political prisoners” who are victims of COINTELPRO. On September 14, 2000, Representative Cynthia McKinney ‘convened a ‘brain trust” on this subject (COINTELPRO) as part of the Congressional Black Caucus’ Legislative Conference, a yearly series of forums and panel discussions on issues of importance to the communities represented by the Caucus.” [78] . The first speaker on the panel was Professor Nkechi Taifa, whose record is more than impressive, ranging from director of the Howard University Law School Equal Justice Program to staff attorney for the National Prison Project, having worked with “issues involving COINTELPRO and political prisoners since 1975.” [79] Professor Taifa highlights the hypocrisy of the FBI’s campaign, stating that “we have to remember that it was actually the FBI who was fomenting the violence (not the BPP).” The next speaker was Kathleen Cleaver, communications secretary of the Black Panther Party from 1967 to 1971. Cleaver starts by detailing her history with the Black Liberation Movement, particularly the Black Panther Party. Cleaver highlights the egregious number of cases involving the Black Panther Party, which turned members into political prisoners. She mentioned Romain Fitzgerald, “who after 30 years is still serving time in California for killing a policeman and it is known that he did not do the shooting. He is very ill”.  There are many former Panthers, victims of the FBI’s illegal COINTELPRO, who are still facing consequences for things they did not do. Cleaver was in the trenches, at the forefront of the battle between the FBI and the BPP. She states that, “The issue is always human rights. The government tried to redefine our struggle for us, to minimize the international broad concept of human rights that motivated us and turn it into something smaller and less threatening.” Cleaver and other leaders knew that the FBI planned to cripple the party, shrink them, and render them incapable of achieving any of their goals. The FBI’s COINTELPRO initiative was ultimately a success, leaving a mark on the Black revolutionaries it victimized.

Notes

[1] NYPL, Black Panther Party Harlem Branch Files 1969-1970. https://archives.nypl.org/scm/20948

[2] Federal Bureau of Investigation, “The Vault, The Black Panther Party”, https://vault.fbi.gov/Black%20Panther%20Party%20

[3] Smith, Roger Guenveur, Spike Lee, and U.S Public Broadcasting Service. A Huey P. Newton story. [Alexandria, Va.: PBS, 2002).

[4] Johnson, Ollie A. (1998) Explaining the Demise of The Black Panther Party The Role of Internal Factors. theanarchistlibrary.org pp. 8

[5] Day, Susie and Whitehorn, Laura. (2001). “Human Rights in the United States: The Unfinished Story of Political Prisoners and COINTELPRO”, New Political Science, Vol. 23, No. 2 (2001) 8.

[6]Bloom, Joshua, Waldo E. Martin, Jr. (2013) Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party. Berkley: University of California Press. P. 382.

[7] Goldstein, Robert Justin. 1990. Reviewed Work(s): “Racial Matters”: The FBI’s Secret File on       Black America, 1960-1972. The Journal of American History, Vol. 77, No. 1. Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American History.

[8] O’Reilly, K. (1989). Racial Matters: the FBI’s Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972. Free  Press.

[9] Goldstein, Reviewed Work(s): “Racial Matters”.

[10] O’Reilly, Racial Matters, P. 265

[11] Collier-Thomas, Bettye and V.P. Franklin. (2001). “No One Ever Asks a Mans Roll in The Revolution”. Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Cilvil Rights-Black Power Movement. New York University Press. P. 230.

[12] Kirby, Ryan J. (2011). “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” Community Activism and the Black Panther Party, 1966-1971.

[13] Collier-Thomas, Bettye and V.P. Franklin. (2001). “No One Ever Asks a Mans Roll in The Revolution”. Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Cilvil Rights-Black Power Movement. New York University Press, 230.

[14]Williams, Jakobi. (2013). From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 172

[15]Williams, Jakobi.From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago. The University of North Carolina Press, 161

[16] Jeffries, Judson L. Reviewed Work(s): From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago.

[17] Williams, Jakobi.From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago. The University of North Carolina Press, 107

[18] Williams, From the Bullet to the Ballot, 174

[19] Farnia, Navid. State Repression and the Black Panther Party: Analyzing Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin’s Black against Empire.

[20] Mullgardt, Brian. (2020). “Further Harassment and Neutralization”: The FBI’s counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) in Illinois, 107

[21] Keating, Ann Drukin. From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago by Jakobi Williams (review). 127.

[22] Kioni-Sadiki, Dequi, “The Past Catches Up to The Present,” Look For Me in The Whirlwind: From the Panther 21 to 21st Century Revolutions, edited by Dequi Kioni-Sadiki and Matt Meyer, 21-35. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2017.

[23] Churchill, Ward. The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent. Boston, MA: South End Press, 109.

[24] Churchill, The Cointelpro Papers, 144

[25] Churchill, Ward. The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent. Boston, MA: South End Press, 133

[26] Sundiata Acoli, “An Updated History of the New African Prison Struggle,” Look For Me in The Whirl wind, edited by Dequi Kioni-Sadiki and Matt Meyer, 41-79. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2017.

[27] Churchill, W., & Vander Wall, J. (1990). The COINTELPRO papers: Documents from the FBI's secret wars against domestic dissent. Boston, MA: South End Press, 138.

[28] Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts. FBI. Fred Hampton. 44-HQ-44202. Part 1.

[29]A production of Blackside, Inc. ; [ creator and executive producer, Henry Hampton]. Eyes on the Prize [ Alexandria, Va.] : PBS Video, 2006. William O’Neil interview Part 1

[30] FBI: The Vault. Black Panther Party. Fred Hampton. 44-HQ-44202. Part 2.

[31] Churchill, W., & Vander Wall, J. (1990). The Cointelpro Papers: Documents From the FBI's Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent. Boston: South End Press, 132

[32]Churchill, The COINTELPRO Papers, 132

[33] Churchill, The Cointelpro Papers, 132

[34] SAC, New Haven Airtel to FBI Director, 4 June 1971, Box 10, John R. Williams Papers.

[35]“SAC, New Haven Airtel to FBI Director, 4 June 1971,” Box 10, Folder 71, John R. Williams Papers.

[36] “Airtel SAC San Francisco to FBI Director, 17 June 1971,” Box 10, Folder 66, John R. Williams Papers.

[37]FBI Files, 1968-1976 Black Panther Party, North Carolina, Vol. 2-15. Federal (various) Bureau of Investigations Electronic Reading Room, P 28 (https://archive.org/details/FBI-BPP-North-Carolina/105-HQ-165706-8-01/page/n49/mode/2up).

[38] FBI Files, Vol. 2-15, 74

[39] FBI Files, 1968-1976 Black Panther Party, North Carolina, Vol. 2-15. Federal (various) Bureau of Investigations Electronic Reading Room, pp. 75 (https://archive.org/details/FBI-BPP-North-Carolina/105-HQ-165706-8-01/page/n49/mode/2up).

[40] FBI Files, 1968-1976 Black Panther Party, North Carolina, Vol. 1-15. Federal Bureau of Investigations Electronic Reading Room. Pp. 48

[41] FBI Files, Black Panther Party, Winston Salem, Vol. 1. Freedom of Information Act. Pp. 30 https://webharvest.gov/peth04/20041019154956/http://foia.fbi.gov/bpanther/bpanther1.pdf .

[42] FBI Files, Black Panther Party, Winston Salem, Vol. 1. Freedom of Information Act. Pp. 30

[43] FBI Files, Black Panther Party, Winston Salem, Vol. 1. Freedom of Information Act. https://webharvest.gov/peth04/20041019154956/http://foia.fbi.gov/bpanther/bpanther1.pdf Page 30 of PDF.

[44]FBI Files, Black Panther Party, Winston Salem Vol. 1. Page 30

[45] Kioni-Sadiki, Dequi, “The Past Catches Up to The Present,” Look For Me in The Whirlwind: From the Panther 21 to 21st-Century Revolutions, edited by Dequi Kioni-Sadiki and Matt Meyer, 21-35. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 201. (23).

[46]Kioni-Sadiki, Dequi, pp. 21-35.

[47] United States House of Representatives. Black Panther Party Part 1: Investigation of Activities in Kansas City, Missouri.; and Indianapolis, Ind. Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security House of Representatives. Ninety-first Congress. 2nd Session July 21-24, 1970.
(http://blackfreedom.proquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/blackpanther19.pdf)

[48] United States House of Representatives, Kansas City, pp. 2616

[49] United States House of Representatives, Kansas City, pp. 2616

[50] United States House of Representatives. Black Panther Party Part 2: Investigation of Activities in Seattle, Washington.; and Indianapolis, Ind. Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security House of Representatives. Ninety-first Congress. 2nd Session July 21-24, 1970.
(http://blackfreedom.proquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/blackpanther20.pdf)

[51] United States House of Representatives, Seattle, pp. 4298.

[52] United States House of Representatives. Black Panther Party Part 3: Investigation of Activities in Detroit, Mich; Philadelphia, Pa.; and Indianapolis,  Hearings Before Committee on Internal Security House of Representatives. Ninety-first Congress. 2nd Session July 21-24, 1970. (http://blackfreedom.proquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/blackpanther21.pdf)

[53] United States House of Representatives. Black Panther Party Part 4 Investigation of Des Moines, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska: Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security House of Representatives. Ninety-first Congress, second session. Washington D.C. (1970)

[54] United States House of Representatives. Black Panther Party Part 4: National Office and Investigation of Activities in Des Moines, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebr. . Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security House of Representatives. Ninety-first Congress. 2nd Session July 21-24, 1970, P 4718 (http://blackfreedom.proquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/blackpanther22.pdf)

[55]United States House of Representatives. Black Panther Party Part 4: National Office and Investigation of Activities in Des Moines, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebr. . Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security House of Representatives. Ninety-first Congress. 2nd Session July 21-24, 1970, P 4792 (http://blackfreedom.proquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/blackpanther22.pdf)

[56] United States House of Representatives. Black Panther Party Part 4: National Office and Investigation of Activities in Des Moines, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebr. . Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security House of Representatives. Ninety-first Congress. 2nd Session July 21-24, 1970, P 4795 (http://blackfreedom.proquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/blackpanther22.pdf)

[57] United States House of Representatives. Black Panther Party Part 1: Investigation of Activities in Kansas City, Missouri.; and Indianapolis, Ind. Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security House of Representatives. Ninety-first Congress. 2nd Session July 21-24, 1970. (http://blackfreedom.proquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/blackpanther19.pdf)

[58] New York Times. https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-New-York-Times. Britannica (2024)

[59]Kifner, John. “The Black Panther Toll is Now 28”. The New York Times. December 7, 1969.

[60] Kifner, “The Black Panther Toll is Now 28”

[61] Gallop. “Americans Respect For Police Surges”. https://news.gallup.com/poll/196610/americans-respect-police-surges.aspx

[62]”Black Panthers Stage a Benefit”233.20. NARA- Washington, D.C.

[63] ”Black Panthers Stage a Benefit” 233.20. NARA- Washington, D.C.

[64] ”Black Panthers Stage a Benefit” 233.20. NARA- Washington, D.C.

[65] Chisholm, The Panther 21 Fundraiser and “Radical Chic”.Leonard Bernstein Office.

[66] Chisholm, The Panther 21 Fundraiser and “Radical Chic”.Leonard Bernstein Office.

[67]Churchill, W., & Vander Wall, J. (1990). The COINTELPRO papers: Documents from the FBI's secret wars against domestic dissent. Boston: South End Press. 148

[68]Carmichael, Stokely. Ready For Revolution: the Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). New York, NY. Scribner, 2003. 663

[69] Caldwell, Earl. (1968). “Black Panthers Growing, but Their Troubles Rise”. New York Times

[70] Bin Wahad, Dhoruba“Assata Shakur, Excluding the Nightmare after the Dream: The Terrorist Label and the Criminalization of Revolutionary Black Movements in the USA,”Look For Me in The Whirl wind, edited by Dequi Kioni-Sadiki and Matt Meyer, 103-125.Oakland,CA: PM Press, 2017.

[71] Charles R. Garry, “A Survey of the Persecution of the Black Panther Party,”

The Black Panthers Speak, edited by Philip S. Foner (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995), 257–258.

[72] Sundiata Acoli, “A Brief History of the Black Panther Party and its Place in the Black Liberation Movement,” Look For Me in The Whirl wind, edited by Dequi Kioni-Sadiki and Matt Meyer, 79-85. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2017

[73] Sundiat,“A Brief History of the Black Panther Party and its Place in the Black Liberation Movement,” , P 79-85.

[74] Stealing J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret. January 7, 2014. Retro Report for the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000002635482/stealing-j-edgar-hoovers-secrets.html?searchResultPosition=22

[75] Federal Bureau of Investigation, Part 30 of 34, “The Vault, The Black Panther Party”, 30. (https://vault.fbi.gov/Black%20Panther%20Party%20)

[76] Senate Resolution 400. Church Committee. 1976.

[77] Bin Wahad, Dhoruba“Assata Shakur, Excluding the Nightmare after the Dream: The Terrorist Label and the Criminalization of Revolutionary Black Movements in the USA,”Look ForMe in The Whirl wind, edited by Dequi Kioni-Sadiki and Matt Meyer, pp. 91.Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2017.

[78] Day, S., & Whitehorn, L. (2001). Human Rights in the United States: The Unfinished Story of Political Prisoners and Cointelpro. New Political Science,  pp. 23(2), 286. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393140120056009

[79] Day, Human Rights in the United States, 287

Black Literature: Beyond Bourgeois Pleading and “Achievement”

[Pictured: Richard Wright sitting on a sofa, Lido, Venice, 1950. (Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche/Getty Images)]

By Jerome Louison

What makes a Black novel (poem, play, or non-fiction work) truly great? Since the time of Phyllis Wheatley, Black writers in America, and their mostly white benefactors, have had to grapple with this question. The question also inspired the origins of this blog. As a lover of old books by Black writers, I’m constantly struck by how many incredible ideas and artistic works have been lost to time. This is due almost entirely to the nature of Black oppression in American society. Black writers and thinkers, regardless of their motivations, have historically conformed to standards imposed by external factors. This has left a legacy of Black writing that, for all its highlights and geniuses, never quite reached its full potential. It also never galvanized the masses of Black people long-term, nor maintained enough Black institutions to perpetuate it. But several thinkers saw this in real-time and warned against it. Richard Wright was one such thinker.

The Historical Role of the Black Writer

While immortalized for his fiction work, particularly his legendary novel “Native Son,” it is Wright’s non-fiction writings that we are concerned with. In particular, we’ll focus on his 1937 essay, “Blueprint for Negro Writing.”1 While a member of the Communist Party, Wright contributed this piece to the leftist magazine New Challenge, which he also helped edit. The essay was meant to underscore the theoretical foundation of the magazine. Wright begins the piece by delineating the types of roles Black writers had historically played in American literature. For white audiences, Wright states:

“[Black writers] entered the Court of American Public Opinion dressed in the knee-pants of servility, curtsying to show that the Negro was not inferior, that he was human, and that he had a life comparable to that of other people.”

As such, these writers were not offered any serious critique for their works on artistic grounds. For Black readership, folks were just happy to see accomplished writers of the race. The result was that, for Wright, “...Negro writing has been something external to the lives of educated Negroes themselves. That the productions of their writers should have been something of a guide in their daily lives is a matter which seems to never have been raised seriously.” Black writers thus had two roles: pleaders for Black humanity to whites generally, and models of “achievement” for the Black petty bourgeoisie to showcase, like trophies. Meanwhile, the lives, and particularly the social and political activity, of working-class Black people went almost completely neglected. Black union organizing and political organizing against lynchings in the South (and North) were absent from Black literature at the time. This was especially egregious to Wright, given that “Lacking the handicaps of false ambition and property, [the Black working-class] have access to a wide social vision and a deep social consciousness.”

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In addition, working-class Black people (who make up the large majority of Black people in America) have a unique culture, developed and recorded mainly through the Black church and folklore. Wright recounts how, through the church, Black people “first entered the shrine of western culture.” For millions of Black people at the time, the church’s teachings were all they knew of the world. On the other hand, Black people retained their deep thought through an oral tradition that included “Blues, spirituals, and folk tales…” Wright explains further:

“...the whispered words of a black mother to her black daughter on the ways of men, to confidential wisdom of a black father to his black son; the swapping of sex experiences on street corners from boy to boy in the deepest vernacular; work songs sung under blazing suns - all these formed the channels through which the racial wisdom flowed.”

In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, Black writers, on the whole, captured none of this. Instead, they strove to use their art to escape their conditions and the people attached to it. Black literature did not have a Black audience in mind.

Nationalism - Endemic to Black Life in America

As a communist writing in a Marxist magazine, Richard Wright makes great pains not to promote a nationalist perspective. The inherent internationalist and integrationist politics of the Communist Party were at odds with Black nationalism, at the time typified by the likes of Marcus Garvey and his UNIA-ACL. However, as Wright remarks, “...the nationalist character of the Negro people is unmistakable.” This “nationalist character” is held in the Black oral tradition and folklore more than anywhere else. Says Wright,

“Here are those vital beginnings of a recognition of value in life as it is lived, a recognition that marks the emergence of a new culture in the shell of the old.”

The plethora of Black institutions, from the church to newspapers to sports leagues, total “a Negro way of life in America.” And it is through these institutions that any progress for Black people is to occur, because, according to Wright, “...all other channels are closed.” Any Black writers looking to make an impact on their people’s conditions must grapple with the nationalist character as it is first, before anything else. It is worth quoting Wright at length here, as this is the core thesis of the essay:

“Negro writers must accept the nationalist implications of their lives, not in order to encourage them, but in order to change and transcend them. They must accept the concept of nationalism because, in order to transcend it, they must possess and understand it. And a nationalist spirit in Negro writing means a nationalism carrying the highest possible pitch of social consciousness. It means a nationalism that knows its origins, its limitations; that is aware of the dangers of its position; that knows its ultimate aims are unrealizeable in capitalist America; a nationalism whose reason for being lies in the simple fact of self-possession and in the consciousness of the interdependence of people in modern society.”

Collective Work and Responsibility

According to Wright, as the 20th century reached its midway point, Black writers had a new level of responsibility. They were uniquely qualified to fill the leadership void left by the “gradual decline of the moral authority of the Negro church, and the increasing irresolution which is paralyzing the Negro middle class leadership…” Through their art, Black writers could and should “create values by which his race is to struggle, live and die.”

Black writers thus need a framework to analyze society and Black people’s place in it. For Wright, a Marxist framework was necessary. Marxian dialectics, which Wright used throughout the essay, explained the dynamic nature of Black life and the various social and economic classes involved. It also imbues one with the will to change the world, not just describe it. True to his nature, however, Wright was not content with Marxist analysis alone. As he writes,

“Yet, for the Negro writer, Marxism is but the starting point. No theory of life can take the place of life. After Marxism has laid bare the skeleton of society, there remains the task of the writer to plant flesh upon those bones out of his will to live.” [emphasis mine]

Throughout the essay, Wright talks of writers having a consciousness. For him, this consciousness is not meant to compel Black writers to preach to their audiences, but to inform the writer’s perspective about the modern world and their place in it. Without that, the writer is “...a lost victim in a world he cannot understand or control.” It is through this consciousness, or “perspective” as Wright also calls it, that the Black writer can connect the daily lives of their people with the machinations of a global economic and political structure which defines the parameters of those lives.

This consciousness is also historical in scope. It involves some understanding of the African origins of Black Americans, and what was lost, as well as retained. With this perspective in place, the number of themes for Black writers is limitless. Dialectically, however, the limitless themes are themselves bound by the limit of the craft itself. Writing does not replace other forms of communication or artistic expression - it complements them.

That complementarity implicitly means that Black writers must work collectively, both among themselves and with other writers. Wright states,

“The ideological unity of Negro writers and the alliance of that unity with all the progressive ideas of our day is the primary prerequisite for collective work.”

Writing near the end of the Great Depression, on the eve of World War II, with the rise of Nazi Germany abroad, and the end of the Harlem Renaissance at home, Wright recognized the tumultuous moment he was in. His blueprint was meant to invigorate a new generation of Black writers to meet this moment. It feels fitting to leave Wright with the last word, which holds much resonance for our current time:

“These tasks are imperative in light of the fact that we live in a time when the majority of the basic assumptions of life can no longer be taken for granted. Tradition is no longer a guide. The world has grown huge and cold. Surely this is the moment to ask questions, to theorize, to speculate, to wonder what materials can a human world be built.”

Notes

[1] The essay can be found in “Richard Wright Reader”, edited by Ellen Wright and Michael Fabre.

What Correctly Defines Pan-Africanism in 2025 and Beyond

By Ahjamu Umi

Republished from Hood Communist.

Since its initial organizational expression in 1900, the phrase Pan-Africanism has been expressed in many different forms. For some, its current meaning is defined as unity between all people of African descent across the world. For others, Pan-Africanism is an ideology defined by nebulous elements of the type of unity previously described. For still many others, Pan-Africanism is represented by social media famous individuals who claim Pan-Africanism as a set of beliefs without any clear defining criteria.

For those of us who identify Pan-Africanism not as an ideology, but as an objective, we define Pan-Africanism as the total liberation and unification of Africa under a continental wide scientific socialist government. This is the framework for revolutionary Pan-Africanists who endorse the concepts of Pan-Africanism laid out by the ideas of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, and others. The reasons we humbly, yet firmly, advance one unified socialist Africa as really the only serious definition of Pan-Africanism are connected to dialectical and historical materialism. By dialectical and historical materialism we mean the historical components that define matter and the conflictual elements that transform that matter. In other words, the history of a thing and the forces that have come to shape that thing’s characteristics over time.

For example, for African people (“All people of African descent are African and belong to the African nation”—Kwame Nkrumah—“Class Struggle in Africa), the reason we live on three continents and the Caribbean in large numbers in 2025 is not the result of higher desire on our part to see the world. It’s not because God placed people who look like us in every corner of the planet. The only reason is because colonialism and slavery exploited Africa’s human and material resources to build up the wealth of the Western capitalist world. As a result of this irrefutable reality, it makes zero sense in 2025 for African people to imitate the logic of other people in defining ourselves based solely upon where we are born.

This approach is illogical because African people were kidnapped from Africa and spread across the world. Even the Africans who left Africa on their own to live in the Western industrialized countries, did so only because colonialism made the resources they seek unavailable in Africa. Consequently, an African in Brazil can and does have biological relatives in the Dominican Republic, Canada, Portugal, the U.S., etc. These people will most likely never meet and even if they came across each other, they probably could not communicate due to language barriers, but none of this changes the cold stark reality that they could easily be related. So, it makes no sense for Africans to accept colonial borders to define ourselves i.e., “I’m Jamaican and have no connection to Black people in the U.S., etc.”

Secondly, and more important, wherever African people are in 2025, we are at the bottom of that society. The reasons for this are not that there is something wrong with African people or that we don’t work hard enough and don’t have ambition. Anyone who has arisen at 5am on any day in Africa knows those conceptions of African people are bogus. Any bus depot at that time of morning shows thousands of people up, hustling, struggling to begin the day trying to earn resources for their families. The real reason we are on the bottom everywhere is because the capitalist system was built on exploiting our human and material resources. As a result, capitalism today cannot function without that exploitation. In other words, in order for DeBeers Diamonds to remain the largest diamond producer on earth, African people in Zimbabwe, the Congo, Azania (South Africa), etc., must continue to be viciously exploited to produce the diamonds. Its this system that has made the zionist state of Israel one of the world’s main diamond polishing economies despite the fact diamond mines don’t exist in occupied Palestine (Israel). Apple, Motorola, Samsung, Hershey, Godiva, Nestle, etc., all rely on similar exploitative systems that steal African resources and labor to continue to produce riches for those multinational corporations while the masses of African people die young from black lung, mining these resources, often by hand.

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Meanwhile, since the wealth of capitalism is dependent upon this system of exploitation to continue uninterrupted, the mechanisms of the capitalist system have to ensure that African people are prohibited from waking up to this reality. Thus, the maintenance of systems of oppression to keep the foot of the system firmly placed on the necks of African people everywhere. Whether its police, social services, etc., this is true. This exploitation marks the origin of the problem, and therefore, logically, it is also where the solution must be addressed. In other words, while we can recognize that the consequences of this exploitation have global dimensions, we cannot expect the problem to be resolved solely through actions taken outside of Africa, such as in the U.S. or elsewhere.

All of the above explains why one unified socialist Africa has to be the only real definition for Pan-Africanism. Capitalism, as the driving force behind the exploitation of Africa and the global African diaspora, cannot serve as the solution to the suffering it has created. Instead, Africa’s vast resources—including its 600 million hectares of arable land, its immense mineral wealth, and the collective potential of its people—must be reorganized into ways to eradicate poverty and disease, including

Ways to educate all who need education to increase the skills to solve these problems. And, in accomplishing all of this, our pride as African people based upon our abilities to govern our own lives, coupled with the necessity for others to respect us for the same, eliminates the constant disrespect—internal and external—which defines African existence today.

This Pan-Africanist reality will eliminate the scores of African people who are ashamed of their African identity overnight. Now, what we will see is those same people clamoring to instantly become a part of the blossoming African nation.

Revolutionary Pan-Africanism cannot be mistaken in 2025 as a pipe dream or simply the hopes of Africans everywhere. Building capacity for this reality is the actual on the ground work that many genuinely revolutionary Pan-Africanist organizations are engaging in on a daily basis. The work to forge that collective unity based upon the principles cited by people like Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara, Robert Sobukwe, Lumumba, Marcus Garvey, Amy/Amy Jacques Garvey, Carmen Peirera, etc. Principles of humanism, collectivism, and egalitarianism.,the Revolutionary African Personality articulated by Nkrumah, the understanding of how to build political party structures as documented by Ture,the understanding of the role of culture in guiding our actions as expressed by Cabral, etc., and many of these types of cultural and principle approaches to building society have been seen in recent times through the work of the former Libyan Jamihiriya and what’s currently happening in the Sahel region. These efforts will only increase and become even more mass in character.

We challenge a single person to express why revolutionary Pan-Africanism is not what’s needed for African people. Not just as one of many ideas, but as the single objective that would address all of our collective problems. Hearing and seeing no one who can refute that statement, the next step is how we collectively increase African consciousness around the necessity to contribute to on the ground Pan-African work. The first step is getting people to see the importance of getting involved in organized struggle. The second step is ensuring that those organizations have institutionalized, consistent, ideological training as a priority.

To seriously embark upon this work brings no individual recognition. It brings no prestige. It requires a clear focus and a commitment to detail, but what it will produce is an ever increasing capacity that will one day manifest itself in the type of revolutionary Pan-Africanism described here that will fulfill the aspirations of African people everywhere while placing us in the position to contribute to all peace and justice pursuing struggles across the planet earth.

Trump Terror, Complicit Local Leadership, and the Assault Against Southeast D.C.

[PIctured: Trump’s Homeland Security Advisor, Stephen Miller. Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images]

By Oliver Robinson

On March 27, 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing the “Safe and Beautiful” federal task force for Washington, DC. Framed as a public safety and beautification campaign, the initiative is led by his Homeland Security Advisor, Stephen Miller—a figure known for his hardline white nationalist policies. Under the guise of civic improvement, this task force seeks to further entrench surveillance, policing, and state control over DC’s most marginalized communities, particularly Black working-class residents in the Southeast neighborhood.

The order calls for a rapid expansion of federal law enforcement in the city, heightened pretrial detention, aggressive encampment clearances, increased immigration raids, and expedited licensing for concealed carry weapons—available, in Trump’s words, to “law-abiding citizens.” But beneath this language lies a clear agenda: consolidate white power, criminalize poverty, and militarize public space.

The expedited concealed carry provision is a particularly dangerous signal. It encourages white, affluent residents to arm themselves, invoking a vigilante ethos reminiscent of colonial settler militias. “Law-abiding” is not a neutral term; it encodes race, class, and political allegiance. The invitation to arm and police the city is not extended to all residents—it is targeted toward those who benefit from and uphold the existing racial and economic order. This strategy turns ordinary citizens into foot soldiers of state repression, authorizing them to defend property and privilege against imagined threats posed by the presence of poor Black people.

This moment is not new—it is a continuation of a long-standing colonial tradition in U.S. governance. Settler colonialism has always relied on deputizing white civilians to enforce racial boundaries and defend elite interests. From slave patrols to Jim Crow possees to “stand your ground” laws, white citizens have been authorized to use violence in defense of a racialized social order.

During the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, we saw armed civilians collaborating with police departments across the country, using protest as a pretext for violent reassertion of racial control. Trump’s current order revives that logic, cloaked in language about safety and civic pride. It asserts that DC’s white and wealthy wards must be secured, and the presence of Black working-class people is rendered not only undesirable, but criminal.

To be clear, Trump’s order did not introduce these policies from scratch—they merely formalized and expanded practices already embraced by the DC government. Under Mayor Muriel Bowser and the DC Council, the city has long adopted a punitive, repressive approach to poverty and displacement. The 2024 Secure DC Omnibus Crime Bill expanded pretrial detention, granting judges more discretion to incarcerate individuals before trial based on vague predictions of risk. This has led to a surge in jail populations, disproportionately affecting Black residents in Southeast DC.  The more recently proposed DC Peace Plan, would further increase police funding and usher in a permanent expansion of pretrial detention. Excessive and arbitrary pretrial detention has long been considered a violation of international human rights.

Even before the federal task force was launched, the city conducted aggressive encampment sweeps under the pretense of public health, displacing unhoused residents without providing stable alternatives. Transit police began cracking down on fare evasion in December 2024, further criminalizing the daily survival of low-income riders. Last week, D.C. launched a new juvenile crime unit, a measure likely to increase the criminalization and harassment of D.C. youth. These moves were not incidental—they reflected a strategic consensus between local and federal actors on policing the poor.

In effect, DC’s local leadership did Trump’s bidding before this executive order.. The same Democratic officials who posture as defenders of the city against federal overreach have in practice laid the groundwork for a full-scale assault on Southeast DC. The repression we are seeing now is not a clash between federal authoritarianism and local progressivism—it is a collaboration.

At the heart of this repression lies a profound contradiction: the state punishes people not for what they have done, but for what they lack. The homeless are not criminalized for actions, but for existing without shelter. Fare evaders are not punished for theft, but for poverty. Those detained pretrial are not convicted criminals, but people who cannot afford bail or who the court deems “risky” based on opaque metrics.

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The city’s approach treats deprivation as deviance. It does not address the root causes of poverty—joblessness, gentrification, structural racism—but instead targets the visible signs of social failure. The presence of unhoused people in parks, the visibility of mental health crises on public transportation, the survival economies people turn to when excluded from formal labor—these are not treated as social emergencies, but as threats to be removed.

In this system, the absence of resources becomes grounds for incarceration. Hunger is met with handcuffs. Displacement is met with surveillance. The logic of colonial control defines who is allowed to exist in the city and under what terms. Poor and working-class Black people are not only excluded from the city’s prosperity—they are blamed for disrupting its image.

For decades, political leaders have framed DC statehood as a solution to federal intrusion and Home Rule as democratic protection for DC residents. But these crises reveal the hollowness of those positions. The problem is not merely that DC lacks representation—it’s that its elected representatives are themselves deeply implicated in maintaining the status quo.

Statehood will not resolve the crisis when local officials already embrace draconian policies. Home Rule means little when the city uses its autonomy to displace the poor and protect real estate interests. Democratic leadership in DC has repeatedly shown that it is more invested in attracting capital than in defending communities. The problem is not just who governs—it’s how they govern, and on whose behalf.

Trump’s agenda did not descend on DC as a foreign imposition. It emerged from a bipartisan consensus that treats working-class Black life as disposable. Statehood might change the city’s formal status, but it won’t transform the deeper power structures that define who is safe, who is served, and who is sacrificed.

True safety will not come from more police, more surveillance, or more statehood. It will come from collective self-determination and community resilience. We must build power from below—through organizing, mutual aid, and political education—to challenge the systems that have abandoned and targeted us.

Survival programs are a cornerstone of this effort. Rooted in the legacy of the Black Panther Party, survival programs meet people’s immediate needs while raising consciousness about the systems that produce those needs in the first place. This means setting up community-run food distribution, free clinics, tenants’ unions, legal defense funds, and harm reduction centers. It means creating networks of care that don’t rely on the nonprofit industrial complex or city contracts, but are autonomous and accountable to the people they serve.

Popular education campaigns are equally essential. Communities must understand not just the what of these policies, but the why—why homelessness is punished instead of solved, why police budgets grow while schools crumble, why poor Black neighborhoods are always the ones targeted. Education must be participatory, rooted in raising political consciousness, and focused on action. It is not enough to critique the system—we must equip people to change it.

Political independence is also key. Communities must stop relying on corporate-backed candidates who claim progressive values but govern through repression. Instead, we must build independent coalitions and decision making structures that challenge the political establishment, not negotiate with it. 

The struggle for Southeast DC is a struggle against colonial control. It is not just about resisting Trump or criticizing Bowser—it is about overturning the entire arrangement that treats Black working-class communities as disposable. We are not fighting for inclusion in a system built on our exclusion. We are fighting to dismantle that system and build something new.

DC will not be saved by statehood. It will not be redeemed by Democratic majorities. Its liberation will come from the people who have always borne the brunt of state violence—and who continue to organize, resist, and imagine another world. The task ahead is not only to survive, but to fight—and to win.

Global Philanthropy as an Artificial Plateau for the Bourgeoisie

By Dumi Gatsha

The past few weeks have shown how destabilized we are globally. Globalization has become too heavy for the modern neocolonial empire. As multilateralism, rules based order and global trade no longer serve the interests of those in power. We are seeing generations of progress wiped away by brutal military forces on one extreme end, whilst ideologies, knowledge, and history are destroyed on the other. We see the destructure through abuses in elected offices at all levels: from sporting code regulators, parent-teacher associations, or either of the three arms of a government. Transgender rights, overseas development assistance and intellectual property law trends reflect the regressive shifts in Global geopolitics. We are all at risk of compromised global health security, climate degradation, and state-sponsored gender disparities.

We are held at ransom by a global elite that has thrived off of capitalism, racism, and digitalization. The frontiers of social, activist and change movements haven't been absolved from this crisis. As the barriers to enablement, resources and funding remain largely pooled in the global minority. Asset managers, Donor-advised funds, and private foundations remain vehicles of tax inequity, avoidance, and wealth hoarding. This diagnosis can be applied to any context where war parallels corporate profit and economic growth propels failed governance. Somewhere amidst all of this, rests philanthropy in plateu. A system replicating the world as we know it: centers of knowledge and power, yielding to the whims of the elite, educated, and well heeled.

There are countless theories of change that are reported as “successful”, leaving an impression that progress can be sustained beyond resourcing or project lifespans. Those theories of change have no meaning in a world that enacts anti-LGBT and anti-abortion laws. Neither a world where safeguards for diversity and inclusion are politicized and revoked through state and corporate machinery. We are witnessing atrocious crimes in real time, documenting injustices via social media in a world where aggressors and perpetrators deploy violence with impunity. Activists and caregivers are exhausted. Social structures are slowly being dismantled and removed from any forms of mutual aid or solidarity action. These are the moments grassroots activists warned against. These are the hallmarks of a world with no peace for those most marginalised.

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As the world burns, grant application windows, requirements, and eligibility take away much needed time for organising. The increased heat warnings and cyclones in Southern Africa only aggravate the socioeconomic conditions for the many problems movements try to solve. Yet climate related opportunities rarely weave in queer or reproductive inequities. The coup de tats in West Africa brought economic renaissance domestically whilst enacting over-regulation of civil society and socially restrictive laws that target women and LGBT populations. Philanthropy remains unimaginative, held up in the hubris of self-serving strategies whilst INGOs navigate self-preservation. Remaining with growth targets and maintaining annual distribution percentages; it is intentional to keep ways of working and grant making business as usual. The hierarchy and value chain must be maintained so they can save face, income floors, and for a “rainy day.” The question is whose rainy day and what kind of rains?

Shifting power remains aspirational. As long as money and capital are not yielded and transferred, the risks and harm to communities will continue. Whilst there aren't any dividends paid out in grant making and partnerships; controls remain pre-determined to normative development aligned programming. This leaves little room for disruptive impact and change. Disruption would mean working ourselves out of activism and philanthropy ceasing to exist. It would mean recognising activism as work deserving of meaningful compensation and social protections — even at grassroots levels. It would look like a reparative system returning exploits and extracts to communities. Valuing circular social structures that do more healing and nurturing of the planet and all people. Systems that support our sense of becoming and belonging without reserving these for those who can assimilate or navigate to adopt. It would mean all of us can be saved from a rainy day without someone deciding whether one of us is deserving or not.

As the year of turmoil continues to unfold, those of us deemed undeserving of solidarity or sunshine remain in abundance. We will resist for our own survival, and rest for our own sanity. No one has saved us from our own people, governments or corporates — neither do we expect to be saved. We continue to share our stories and joy with the hope that the world will become kinder one person at a time. Whilst our dignity and personhood may be stripped from us in moments of inequity and injustice; our humanity remains in tact. This was captured harrowingly beautifully by Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela Mandela: “you are interrogated for 7 nights and 7 days without sleep… God provided a mechanism I had never thought of at the time. I reached a threshold where the body could not take the pain anymore, then I would faint. Those were the most beautiful moments. The body rested and when they threw a bucket of water to wake me up… I got up, I was so refreshed and I started fighting all over again.”

We continue to dream and cultivate our world as best as we can, with the little we have wherever we are. We have accepted that philanthropy, especially that which extends from global capital, will never have the capacity or compassion to meet us where we are. After all, communities remain behind when the donor, enabler, investor, INGO, or development program leave our countries. We will continue to speak truth to power, as capitalism continues without an end in sight. Toni Morrion's masters narrative beautifully captures how I view philanthropy's plateau. Void of any transformative disruption or imagination — whilst performing all the right words, keeping the same partners, co-opting participation and representation to maintain its systems. Its practitioners drawn from across development, volunteer, and civil society pipelines bear the hallmarks of Audre Lorde's masters tools. However, as a part of neocolonial Empires and in Gad Saad's words: philanthropy is bound to implode from within due to its own excesses. We will still be there to recreate, rebuild, and heal towards a queer, climate, and gender just world.

Dumi Gatsha (they/them) is the first ever gender diverse parliamentary candidate in Botswana, former facilitator of the #ShiftThePower UK Funders Collective and founder of Success, a grassroots organisation working in the nexus of human rights and sustainable development.

Crisis in the Carolinas: The Lowcountry and Climate

By Erica Veal and Karl Malone

Republished from Hood Communist.

Africans are largely left out of conversations about environmentalism, despite the fact that we suffer from the triple threat of climatic, environmental and human rights crises. Our communities bear the brunt of the climate catastrophe, and this is especially true in the South Carolina Lowcountry where sea level rise threatens to wash away our Gullah Geechee homelands. Our relationship to environmental racism stretches back to the emergence of the local phosphate mining industry in the 1860’s and manifests today in the disproportionate exposure of Black and low income residents to environmental hazards. Today, Gullah Geechee communities disproportionately neighbor hazardous waste sites like landfills, sewage plants, incinerators and manufacturing facilities. Add to this gaping racial disparities rooted in the region’s history of chattel slavery, and it becomes clear why Black people should be the vanguard of the environmental movement.

Cooperation Jackson and the Black Environmentalist Movement

When people think about environmentalists, stereotypes about white, tree-hugging hippies come to mind. For Black environmentalist Kali Akuno, co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi, it is important for Black people to challenge these stereotypes by taking charge of the environmental movement. As someone who has closely followed the climate crisis, he calls attention to the fact that by 2050 the large portions of the Black Belt will be underwater if the predictions of environmental scientists are accurate. The Black Belt refers to the crescent shaped strip of fertile land in the Southeastern United States which has historically been home to an almost unbroken chain of majority (or near majority) Black counties stretching from Virginia to East Texas. It is the historic homeland of Africans trafficked to North America to build the wealth of this nation during the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and where the majority of their descendants still live today. According to Akuno, the land millions of Africans in North America currently occupy is some of the most vulnerable to climate change and, as such, Black people are most likely to be displaced as a result of climate change induced natural disasters. The rising costs of housing means finding new homelands for ourselves may prove an insurmountable task, which is why our stake in the environmental movement is so high.

Sitting less than 20 feet above sea level, Charleston, South Carolina is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise. For Gullah Geechee residents, the constant flooding, brought about by regular storms and unusually high tides, exacerbate the racial disparities we face. Flooding causes transportation delays and can mean missing work. It also causes property damage for residents whose homes flood constantly, as is the case for several public housing projects across the Charleston peninsula. Wading through flood waters can mean exposure to raw sewage, which can lead to adverse medical outcomes, medical expenses and the list goes on. For Black residents on fixed incomes, many of whom live below the poverty line, flooding is a constant nuisance and it’s only getting worse.

In the few weeks of lockdown we experienced during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic we saw how quickly the environment regenerated albeit temporarily. Industrial emissions dropped, the air became cleaner, as did waterways, migratory patterns of wildlife improved, and the list goes on. We saw that change is possible, but we live in a capitalist system that puts profits before people and the planet. We cannot afford to be silent and sit idly by while billionaires and private corporations continue to pollute our world and the people living on it to enrich themselves. Akuno says we’ve already surpassed the worst case scenario according to many climate models. Therefore to “curb ecological destruction,” Black people have a compound responsibility to organize against the systems that oppress us and take climate change seriously.

Learning from Cuba’s Fight Against Climate Change

We don’t have to reinvent the wheel in our effort to fight the climate crisis. We can learn from places like Cuba, a majority African, island nation in the Caribbean, that is largely the most sustainable country in the world. Cuba has embraced environmentalism like no nation has. It is the only country to meet the World Wildlife Fund’s definition of sustainable development. Its government has implemented policies to reduce the waste of natural resources and minimize its carbon footprint in the form of a successful 100 year plan to combat climate change called Tarea Vida (Life Task). Tarea Vida includes a ban on new home construction in potential flood zones, the introduction of heat-tolerant crops to cushion food supplies from droughts, and the restoration of Cuba’s sandy beaches to help protect the country against coastal erosion. Cuba is a leader in the environmental movement and all while struggling under an unjust and deadly 60+ year economic blockade imposed by the United States government.

Cuba underwent a successful, largely Black-led socialist revolution in the 1950’s, freed itself from the imperialist exploitation of the United States and naturalized its resources. In addition to leading the environmental movement, Cuba leads in medicine (sending doctors all over the world), has eradicated illiteracy, subsidized housing and food, has universal education from pre-K to PhD and is a shining example of what the world could be if we put people before profits. Although socialism in Cuba poses no threat to the United States, the government has kept the blockade in place and caused shortages in food, medicine, gas and other essential items at the expense of the Cuban people. Most recently, under the Trump administration, Cuba was added to the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list, further exacerbating shortages on the island.

In the face of all this, there are many parallels around the climate crisis between Cuba and Gullah Geechee communities in the South Carolina Lowcountry, e.g. soil erosion and sea level rise are clear. Additionally, when considering the racial disparities faced by Gullah Geechee people (and the entire Black Belt region), it is as if we, too, are living under a form of economic blockade. Africans in North America are more likely to face food and housing insecurities and less likely to have access to quality schools, day care, health services, and a living wage. We are more likely to be exposed to environmental hazards that expose us to adverse health outcomes and all of this is a direct result of the choices made by our bought and paid for government officials, both democrats and republicans alike. Yet, Cuba, the socialist capital of the western world, has shown us things do not have to be this way. For these reasons and more we should actively organize against the US economic blockade and the removal of Cuba from the SSOT list. The future of Gullah Geechee communities may literally depend on our ability to learn from Cuba’s people centered policies and innovations in environmental science.

Environmental Racism in North Charleston

The socio-economic state of the Gullah Geechee people is daunting and stretches back to the era of slavery. Africans in North America were never meant to be anything more than a source of cheap labor for Europeans to exploit. We were kidnapped, enslaved and trafficked here for our knowledge of rice agriculture and we transformed the landscape of the Southeast Atlantic coast from a vast expanse of Bottomland Hardwood Forests to a seemingly never ending complex of rice fields working in some of the harshest conditions as chattel slaves. As a result, Charleston became the richest city in colonial America and with the the largest slave port on the continent.

After the Civil War ended in 1865, phosphate mining became the most successful form of industry in the Lowcountry, replacing the major agricultural and textiles industries that could no longer be sustained due to the loss of the free labor of enslaved Africans. Since calcium phosphate was discovered in the beds of the Ashley River, it provided former the enslavers who owned this land an opportunity to “recoup some of their financial losses after the Civil War” by either selling their land, leasing it out to mining companies that began forming everywhere, or establishing mining companies of their own. The increasing demand for labor was quickly filled by newly “freed” Gullah Geechee people, who dominated this industry due to their being locally available and accustomed to working in the sub tropical Lowcountry climate.

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Though the rise and fall of the phosphate industry in South Carolina lasted roughly 20 years, the long term damage to the environment is still being felt today. This period marked the beginning of a long history of environmental racism in the Gullah Geechee community. Studies show that “exposure to these harmful conditions results in negative health outcomes, stressed communities, and reduction in quality of life and neighborhood sustainability.” The Environmental Protection Agency has identified many of these old mining and processing locations as hazardous waste sites. One such waterfront site in North Charleston, could potentially be developed into another heavy industrial boat manufacturing facility, but Black residents are actively fighting against this.

In 2015, the Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission (CCPRC) acquired the former Baker Hospital site off Azalea Drive in North Charleston with the intention of developing the 57 acre property into a waterfront park. It has since leased 11 acres to a local company called Sea Fox Boats. According to an online petition circulated in March 2024, although “The City of North Charleston has zoning in place that will keep industrial uses off of the park property,” CCPRC applied to change the zoning to either heavy or light industrial to accommodate their new lease agreement. CCPRC claims profits from the tenant will fund the environmental cleanup and development of the remaining 46 acres park site while representatives for Sea Fox claim the manufacturing plant will bring jobs to the community. Black residents like KJ Kearney, from communities surrounding the proposed park site, are pushing back on this saying they already have jobs and this segment of North Charleston has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the area. Others have said they don’t need or want heavy industry in their communities, particularly on a site that is already contaminated because of decades of industrial use. Jobs won’t matter if residents are sick from exposure to contaminants and they don’t want jobs that will lead to the death and destruction of the environment.

While North Charleston’s city planning commission voted to deny CCPRC’s recommendation to rezone the site in March, the ultimate decision is up to city council. On Thursday, April 18th, 2024, Black residents again voiced their concerns at a public meeting saying they felt left out of the decision making process. Yes, residents want a waterfront park in that area of North Charleston, but not at the expense of exacerbating environmental conditions and hazards. The controversy surrounding the Baker Hospital site is an example of environmental racism at its best. While proponents of Sea Fox push the narrative of job creation, Kearney says, “the community is not against jobs” rather they are against the idea that “the only value historically Black communities have to their city is as a labor force.” He went on to talk about how the plant will produce tons of hazardous air pollutants and that, for a community which ranks” in the 95 percentile for asthma,” that is a risk they cannot afford to take. He suggested that the paternalistic framing of the situation by Sea Fox supporters is clear– Black people should be grateful for the opportunity to work for a rich white man who wants to invest in their communities and simply ignore the impact of the plant on their quality of life. After a long and heated meeting, the council voted to postpone making a decision on the rezoning for another 60 days so the council can gather more information, but the people who live in this area have made their position clear.

While the city council in North Charleston is mostly Black and so is the new mayor, that is not enough to ensure the will of the people is carried out. The masses of Africans in the Lowcountry must continue to actively organize against this type of blatant environmental injustice to mitigate damage to our communities and the environment. We already suffer tremendously under the crushing weight of capitalism and its partners in crime (racism, white supremacy, sexism, gender bias, etc.), but this isn’t just about us. We know the success of our liberation struggles benefit all oppressed people. If we don’t act, the climate crisis will be the death knell that marks the permanent destruction of our communities. None of us will be free until all of us are free, but what use is freedom on a dead planet?

The authors represent the Lowcountry Action Committee, a Black led grassroots organization dedicated to Black liberation through service, political education, and collective action in the Lowcountry.

Sources

1. Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi, edited by Kali Akuno and Ajamu Nangwaya

2. “Is Pollution Poisoning Charleston’s African American and Low Income Communities?” https://charlestoncitypaper.com/2016/03/09/is-pollution-poisoning-charlestons-african-american-and-low-income-communities/

3. “Free the Land w/ Kali Akuno” Hood Communist Radio https://open.spotify.com/episode/789OXvt1LdjEJ5e8pFCMUp

4. The Black Belt Thesis: A Reader by the Black Belt Thesis Study Group

5. “Flooding Intensifies Charleston Region’s Racial and Wealth Inequalities” https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/flooding-intensifies-charleston-regions-racial-and-wealth-inequities

6. Could Covid lockdown have helped save the planet? https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/29/could-covid-lockdown-have-helped-save-the-planet

7. Cuba’s Life Task: Combatting Climate Change documentary by Helen Yaffe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APN6N45Q6iU

8. “Consequences of a Blockade of Cuba” 23 April 1962 Central Intelligence Agency https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79R00904A000800020016-7.pdf

9. “The State of Racial Disparities in Charleston County, South Carolina, 2000–2015” https://avery.charleston.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/The-State-of-Racial-Disparities-in-Charleston-County-SC-Rev.-11-14.pdf

10. History of the Corridor: Industry https://ashleyriverhistoriccorridor.org/history/industry/#:~:text=In%201883%20over%203%2C000%20African,well%20as%20state%20convict%20labor

11. History of the Corridor: Bulow/Long Savannah https://ashleyriverhistoriccorridor.org/sites/long-savannahbulow-plantation/

12. “A History of the Phosphate Mining Industry in the South Carolina Lowcountry” http://nationalregister.sc.gov/SurveyReports/hyphosphatesindustryLowcountry2SM.pdf

13. “Baker Hospital site to become a new county park” https://www.postandcourier.com/archives/baker-hospital-site-to-become-a-new-county-park/article_0630e058-999d-5de4-9319-5addea566537.html

14. “Public input process to start this winter for Charleston County Parks’ North Charleston Ashley River Site” https://www.ccprc.com/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/1423

15. “Preserve the Former Baker Hospital as a Park” https://www.change.org/p/preserve-the-former-baker-hospital-site-as-a-park?original_footer_petition_id=35513102&algorithm=promoted&source_location=petition_footer&grid_position=15&pt=AVBldGl0aW9uAEWcQgIAAAAAZe1wynNJJ%2BAxMzdmNTMxMQ%3D%3D

16. “N. Charleston argues plans for former Baker Hospital site, fate in council hands” https://www.live5news.com/2024/03/12/n-charleston-argues-plans-former-baker-hospital-site-fate-council-hands/

17. “Delay in North Charleston zoning decision fuels frustration over old Baker Hospital site” https://abcnews4.com/news/local/delay-in-north-charleston-zoning-decision-fuels-frustration-over-old-baker-hospital-site-south-carolina-wciv-news-4

The State Can't Isolate the Imagination: Vernon T. Bateman and the Struggle to Free Them All

[Photo: Vernon T. Bateman and his supporters at “Eclipsing Injustice” at the District Theatre in Indianapolis. Credit: Indianapolis Liberation Center.]

By Jay Grillo and Derek R. Ford

U.S. prisons are universally known for their exceptional brutality and terror, with even corporate media covering their routine barbarity. What is less widely acknowledged, however, is the ongoing history of resistance against the mass incarceration system that is organized behind, across, and outside of prison bars. This political resistance is visible in the heroic hunger strikes and uprisings of our people behind enemy lines; it is also evident in the hope and creativity that not only survive, but actually foster in such isolating and despairing conditions.

There is perhaps no better example of this resistance that defies the state’s repressive apparatus than Vernon T. Bateman who, in 1998, was falsely charged and convicted of rape, criminal deviant conduct, and confinement in Gary, Indiana. The state had no evidence connecting him to the crime. Even worse, what physical evidence existed never materialized in court. As detailed below, Bateman was convicted based entirely on prosecutorial misconduct and false testimonies that were later recanted, yet he wasn’t released from prison until 2023, and he continues to live in a social prison under severe parole conditions. Although Bateman has maintained his innocence and fought for his freedom since 1998, the organized battle for his full exoneration is just beginning.

Imagination Flourishing and Isolating Conditions

Most people don’t know Bateman’s history of wrongful incarceration. He is, however, widely known for his art, something his grandfather–a poet, framer, and painter–introduced him to as a child. Vernon could draw years before he could read or write, skills he only learned once incarcerated. He did more than learn common literacy, however: he combined writing and drawing with his burgeoning artistic imagination, and he realized that creative capacity under the most repressive conditions.

Out of his 25 years served in prison, the state subjected Bateman to 10 years in solitary confinement. He turned a box meant to isolate and torture him into a space of imagination, resilience, and even community building. Solitary confinement was where Bateman, using crayons smuggled into the prison, wrote his first children’s book: Mommy I Want 2 Fly. Published in 2012, he wrote the first of what would be several children’s books as a way to parent his child from behind bars after her mother was killed by a drunk driver. The next year he published They Can’t Hurt Me No More, which tackled anti-LGBTQ bigotry and bullying.

Bateman’s art continues to expand, as does the people’s desire for it. At the end of March 2024, he unveiled his “Eclipse Murals” at The District Theatre in downtown Indianapolis to a crowd of artists, faith leaders, community organizers, friends, family, and passersby. If you watch Bateman discuss the murals, you can hear, see, and feel his dedication to community, creativity, and  justice. Originally created as gifts for the public, he eventually gave into the venue owner’s insistence on remuneration.

How the State Sent Another Innocent Black Man to Prison

Maintaining his innocence, Bateman refused to accept any plea deals. Within a few years of his sentencing, the disturbing systemic injustices and significant irregularities in the state’s case against Bateman started surfacing, ones that do more than establish reasonable doubt; they establish his innocence. Nonetheless, Bateman spent 25 years in prison, over half of his life so far. Although he was released from prison in 2023, he continues to be subjected to conditions that amount to house arrest, including ankle monitoring and curfews, the inability to attend therapy or take driving classes to get his license, and more. He hasn’t even been able to meet his own grandson yet.

Fortunately, a growing community of support is working to exonerate Bateman, a fight you can aid by signing a petition demanding his full and immediate exoneration. A new documentary provides a glimpse into the humility, kindness, optimism, and commitment to justice Bateman and his artistic work and community projects, like Baby22 Gun Safety LLC, exemplify.

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A Corrupt Detective, False Testimony, and a Lying “Eyewitness”

When the trial started on September 14, 1998, Angela Truitt, the complaining witness, failed to appear causing the judge to issue a bench warrant; however, the next day, the same judge granted the State a continuance until September 22, 1998, rather than dismissing the charges against Bateman. That Bateman’s public defender did not object or ask for a dismissal evidenced the ineffective assistance he received at trial. Truitt’s absence is notable, especially when accompanied by the self-revelation that she did not come to court because she had “reasonable doubt” that Bateman was even involved in the crime at all.

In 2004, the alleged victim, Angela Truitt, testified under oath that chief investigator Detective Mary Banks told her to identify Bateman as one of her assailants. After confirming this, Attorney Ray L. Szarmach asked if it “was, in fact, Vernon Bateman at the rape, or was Vernon Bateman in that rape?” In her sworn testimony, Truitt said “I’m not sure. I told you they told me that’s who it was. I didn’t know who none of them guys were. The police told me he was a suspect.” When asked why Truitt recanted her testimony and if she wanted him to be free, she responded “Yes.”

The other testimony used by the state was delivered by Det. Banks, who said she got Bateman’s name “from the other suspect [Sa’ron Foley] that was in custody.” Foley was a co-defendant tried separately for the same crime. He never appeared on the stand during Bateman’s trial, depriving Bateman of his constitutional right to cross-examination. Banks delivered his testimony, which he later admitted was fabricated. Since at least 2005, Foley has adamantly worked to atone for his lie. In a 2009 affidavit, Foley stated that he “made falsified statements against Vernon Bateman on 1-23-98 to Det. M. Banks,” and that he had contacted Bateman’s attorney about five years prior to relay his willingness to testify on Bateman’s behalf. He never heard back.

Nine years later, in a handwritten letter addressed to FOX59 and reporter Angela Ganote and signed by a Notary Public, Foley wrote he had “been silent for too long” and “this evidence should have been brought to the court’s attention 20 yrs ago… Vernon Bateman was never [at the scene of the alleged crime]... That was made up by me & Det. Mary Banks.”

That same year, Foley even dedicated an entire hearing before the parole board, which only happens once a year, to advocate for Bateman’s freedom rather than his own. Foley lied because of a grudge he held against Bateman, but, as Ganote reported, “he has been trying to make things right for decades. He has written attorneys, a judge, the governor and me. He says no one will listen.” The state’s continued refusal to listen is the answer to Foley’s question.

A “Missing” Rape Kit

What is perhaps most perplexing–or rather, convincing–is that the sexual assault forensic exam performed on Truitt, the very thing that could exonerate Bateman, was never entered into evidence. Bateman’s motions requesting the results of the examination and to submit his own DNA into evidence were denied.

A physician at Methodist Northlake Hospital examined the alleged victim, Angela Truitt, and released the sexual assault kit to Det. Banks. However, the state neither tested nor introduced the rape kit as evidence during Bateman’s trial. When asked if the examination results came back during cross-examination, Banks said “I don’t know.” In 2019, when Indiana reporter Angela Ganote tried to track it down, the hospital referred her to the Gary police, who referred her to the city’s attorneys, who “told me they didn’t have it.”

To this day, the kit hasn’t been recovered. The prison authorities later explicitly denied Ganote from visiting Bateman while he remained behind bars.

Throughout this period, various legal petitions and appeals were filed, including petitions to challenge Bateman's conviction and justify his release. These efforts were met with resistance and legal hurdles, further prolonging Bateman's unjust imprisonment. Notably, a petition to vacate highlighted violations of Bateman's constitutional right to cross-examine his accuser, including the loss of crucial evidence such as the rape kit and ineffective assistance of counsel, were denied.

Join Bateman’s Struggle and Free Them All!

Bateman says he doesn’t have any ill feelings towards Truitt. “You got to understand, people like me aren’t mad at the alleged victims, but at the system. In my case, my accuser was a victim of the system, too,” he said in an April 2024 interview with the Indianapolis Liberation Center.

Bateman, his family, and even his former enemy have been fighting for his freedom for decades. The state remains unwilling to acknowledge the abundant judicial misconduct, recanted testimonies, and police corruption that kept an innocent man in prison for over half of his life and to this day keep him locked in a social prison. They can only do so as long as his story remains hidden.

What will it take to exonerate yet another innocent man held captive by the state of Indiana? An organized struggle that forces the truth into the open and makes it impossible for the state to continue avoiding accountability. This struggle, which is only possible because of Bateman’s enduring belief that justice will prevail in the end, is one that needs your support, whoever and wherever you are.

Bateman’s story demonstrates that, despite all of its repressive powers, the state remains impotent when confronted by the imagination, creativity, and resilience of humanity. That is the most powerful lesson–the one often neglected in the doomsday pieces about the racist and capitalist U.S. mass incarceration system–that Bateman’s words, works, and very being teach us every day. It’s up to us to learn and act on that lesson to win freedom not only for Bateman, but for all wrongly convicted, political, and social prisoners in the United States.

Exonerate Vernon T. Bateman now!

The Duplicitous U.S. Constitution: How An Autocratic Legal Document Became A Sacred and Incontestable Scroll

[Photo credit: MPI/Getty Image]

By Tim Scott

Republished from Dissident Voice.

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

— Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

We live in a nation founded within a prevailing story line that characterizes the United States as being an exceptional, enlightened and charitable nation. A nation that is a “beacon of light…in every corner of the globe,” generated by the ethos of the American Dream, based on the values and ideals of liberty, justice, fairness, equality and democracy for all.

We also live in a nation that was established to be an empire, whereby imperialism and settler colonialism are endlessly justified and promulgated by an underlying cultural narrative which ascribes whiteness to morality, and by extension a nation bestowed with a divine right to lay claim—at will—to the lands, resources and bodies of Black, Brown and Indigenous people. A nation where private property rights are akin to natural rights, therefore framing capitalism, no matter how brutal, with benevolent intent and thus inviolable. These structural foundations, which are rooted within the barbarism of chattel slavery and the brutality of gender oppression, constructed an enduring national culture defined by genocide, dispossession, white supremacy, anti-blackness, heteropatriarchy, misogyny, social inequity and wealth inequality. Over three centuries later, despite significant efforts by resistance movements to transform it, this underlying national culture persists; entwined within an era where mass surveillance, mass incarceration, unprecedented wealth inequality and unending militarism are perversely justified as imperatives to preserve freedom, democracy and the mythical “American Dream.”

The contradictions between the nation’s mythologies and actual practices are inherent to—and effectively serve to preserve—the cultural, political and economic foundations of the United States. They are indicative of a nation that was founded by an opulent minority of white men who believed that they alone had a God-given right to freedom and prosperity and thus constructed the structural means to protect their wealth and power from a dispossessed demos and to justify the subjugation and exploitation of entire groups of people. Their design for the new nation was based on what economist Joseph Stiglitz refers to as the “interplay between ideologies and particular interests.” As such, the white supremacist and patriarchal ideologies of the wealthy, slave-owning Christian men who founded the nation were fused with free market ideology, the engine for the emerging interests of industrial capitalism. Within this design and from the outset, the founders intended for government to serve as the executor of these violent and undemocratic ideologies and interests.

As many political, legal, and history scholars have acknowledged, the U.S. Constitution was constructed to be an ideological and legal document intended to secure the interests of the virtuous and enlightened gentry who—like royalty—considered themselves to be ordained with a natural right to rule the nation in perpetuity. The founders’ declarations and ensuing constitution promoted an overriding myth or “origin story” that defined the new nation as a unified whole, engaging in a virtuous republican mission whereby, according to John Adams, “all men, rich and poor, magistrates and subjects, officers and people, masters and servants, the first citizen and the last, are equally subject to the laws.” Democracy was therefore (falsely) equated with the ideology of republicanism, whereby the nation’s citizenry was promised equal rights under the law and the inalienable rights to liberty. It is within this context that individual sovereignty and private property were intended to be protected, according to John Adams, from the “tyranny of the majority” (i.e., the “mob rule” of a direct democracy).

In effect, the founders constructed the intersecting cultural, political and economic instruments that would permanently advance the interests of a wealthy white minority through institutionalized and impervious methods of domination and extermination. Thus, the origin story generated by the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and have “inalienable rights” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” were never intended to be all inclusive. This also holds true to Preamble of the U.S. Constitution, which states:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Instead, the civil and political rights within the U.S. Constitution were restricted to focus exclusively on individual and property rights—for some. This design sought to undermine the possibility for the establishment of universal and equal participation in all spheres of life (participatory parity), not only between the ruling elite, their agents and those they subjugated, but more importantly amongst and between subjugated groups. Thus, complex interdependencies, chains of democratic equivalences, meaningful deliberative processes and solidarities that could threaten the power of the ruling elite were intentionally defused. The founders’ discourse and origin story myths were intended to serve as empty signifiers, having very different meanings and values with regard to who they apply to and how they were to be operationalized. Thus, the discourse of republicanism was ascribed with the interests of the nation’s white male Christian aristocracy and to a lesser degree to their citizen agents who occupied the white middle-class. However, the narrative of life, liberty and equality was never intended to pertain to everyone else.

During the nation’s infancy, when disorder and uncertainty were widespread, the founders’ myths served to define in totality a positive and fully sutured national identity, establishing a foundation for social practices and ideological representations that were instrumental in the social construction of reality and subjectivity for the nation’s white citizen subjects. This set forth a process whereby socialization and identity formation were based on the ideological shaping of a cultural imaginary, constituted through what political theorist Chantel Mouffe referred to as the logic of equivalence, which is “to create specific forms of unity among different interests by relating them to a common project and by establishing a frontier to define the forces to be opposed, the ‘enemy.’” Initially this “common enemy” was the tyranny of the British monarchy, and subsequently took many forms—the tyranny of majority rule, the threat of the “savage Indian,” the emancipation of slaves, Blackness, Mexicans, recognition rights for women and notions of equity and equality in general. Over time and as the empire expanded, the enemy would include any group—or any idea—that posed a threat to the nation’s prevailing power structures.

Despotic ideologies such as this reject the historical conditions by which social relations are constructed, instead representing them as outside of history, as inevitable and natural, while disguising their underlying belief systems as common sense facts. According to Anne Makus, presenting events and practices as ahistorical truths allows problematic events to be framed as unproblematic and a “natural” consequence of society. By losing their postulational status, beliefs are transformed into narrative truths that are immune to differing accounts of events.

Ultimately, the ideological function of the founders’ origin story myths, cultural imaginaries and their corresponding discourse or “narrative truths” resulted in a what Cultural theorist Raymond Williams describes as a “complex interlocking of political, social and cultural forces” known as hegemony.

A Revolution for “Great and Overgrown Rich Men”

Historian Gary B. Nash documented how, for over a century prior to the American Revolution, an elite class of white male landowners, slaveholders and large-scale merchants dominated the political, economic and cultural landscape of the thirteen British settler colonies. In 1770, Boston’s top 1% of the population owned 44% city’s wealth. In the late 17th century the wealthiest 10% of all colonists owned approximately 47% of all the wealth; and by 1775 the wealthiest 10% owned roughly 65% of all the wealth. During the 18th century approximately 30% of all British colonists were free white men, with about 50% of those men owning land, though most of them did not own enough land to be considered wealthy. Approximately 20% of all colonists were Black slaves, and 50% were poor white indentured servants.

At the outset, the privatization of land in the British settler colonies occurred through the genocidal project that is settler colonialism and later through the transfer or privatization of state (“public”) land. According to historian Meyer Weinberg and economists Engerman & Gallman, seized land was often awarded to individuals and families based on their location to power and influence within seats of government and became the basis for commercial pursuits and further accumulation of private wealth. Increasingly during the 18th century, land acquisition and allocation was sold for profit and speculation.

As documented by historian Howard Zinn, the leaders of the Sons of Liberty, the first and second Continental Congress and Continental Army Officers primarily came from the landed gentry of British settler colonial society. With high unemployment and hunger fueling class upheaval following the French and Indian War (1754-1763), aristocratic colonial leaders faced the prospect of waging war against Britain, while also “maintaining control over” the discontented “crowds at home.” During the delegates elections for a convention to frame a Pennsylvania constitution in 1776, a Committee of Privates (composed of white working class enlisted militiamen), “urged voters to oppose ‘great and overgrown rich men” for “they will be too apt to be framing distinctions in society.” According to historians Young, Raphael and Nash, these sentiments led the Committee of Privates to draw up a bill of rights for the convention stating, “an enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness, of mankind; and therefore every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property.”

According to Zinn, the populist discourse of the Declaration of Independence, which declared the right to “popular control over governments, the right of rebellion and revolution, indignation at political tyranny, economic burdens, and military attacks,” proved to unite large enough numbers of white settler colonists to actively rebel against Britain. This propaganda-based document was highly effective in shaping popular opinion by appealing to the yearnings of disenfranchised white settler colonists as a means to unite against a common enemy. Of course, large populations were left out of the populist cause elicited by the Declaration of Independence; namely Black slaves, Native people and in many regards white women. This reality would only become further institutionalized following the War of Independence. It would also turn out that the aristocratic founders were indeed “apt to be framing [class] distinctions in society” as many white working class militiamen had feared.

As Historian Gordon S. Wood explained, in 1776, immediately after issuing the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, a committee of the Second Continental Congress was charged with drafting the first U.S. Constitution known as the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. It was signed by Congress in 1777 and ratified by representatives from all thirteen states in 1781. The Articles established the U.S. to be a confederation of sovereign states, with appointed representatives from the thirteen states making up a national government. Under the Articles the national government was composed of a legislature consisting of one house in which states had equal voting power. There was not an executive branch or a general judiciary. This new national government was charged with overseeing domestic relations with Native tribes, international diplomacy and conducting the war with Britain.

According to Charles A. Beard, at the end of the War of Independence in 1783, establishing a cohesive economy and infrastructure overseen by common laws proved to be difficult under the decentralized system of government outlined by the Articles of Confederation. This was especially challenging during a time of economic instability due to immense war debt. Congress lacked the authority to tax and collect debt directly, to stabilize legal tender and regulate commerce since state legislatures were often unresponsive to these demands, operating without legal restrictions or judicial oversight.

For many former colonial noblemen known as Federalists—who made up a majority in most state legislatures and the Continental Congress—the Articles of Confederation were failing to secure the protection and advancement of their personalty or personal property (movable assets). Many southern plantation owners were also Federalists since their wealth was also largely held in personal property (including slaves) and therefore tied to the same economic interests as northern merchants and financiers. According to Beard, this aristocratic class of large-scale farm owners, merchants, shippers, bankers, speculators, and private and public securities holders believed that a more powerful federal government was required to protect their economic interests.

A minority coalition within the Continental Congress whose economic interests were primarily tied to real (landed) property were known as Anti-federalists. This group of white wealthy male freeholders, small business owners and middle-class, tenant and debtor settler farmers equated concentrated federal power with British rule and therefore preferred a weak central government that would not “tread” on individual rights and state sovereignty.

A Constitution for “The Minority of the Opulent”

As Michael Cain and Keith Dougherty documented, the eruption of Shay’s Rebellion in 1786 only strengthened the Federalist cause. This indebted settler farmer rebellion against the state of Massachusetts was fueled by high taxes and farm foreclosures in western Massachusetts, a mounting crisis that was sweeping across the new republic. Noah Brooks chronicled how General Henry Knox, a major public securities holder, wrote to George Washington in response to this “desperate debtor” rebellion of farmers, laborers and Revolutionary War veterans:

The people who are the insurgents have never paid any, or but very little taxes – But they see the weakness of government; They feel at once their own poverty, compared with the opulent, and their own force, and they are determined to make use of the latter, in order to remedy the former. Their creed is ‘That the property of the United States has been protected from the confiscations of Britain by the joint exertions of all, and therefore ought to be the common property of all. And he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and for justice, and ought to be swept from off the face of the earth.’ In a word they are determined to annihilate all debts public and private and have agrarian Laws, which are easily effected by means of un-funded paper money which shall be a tender in all cases whatever.

As Beard explained “the southern planter was also as much concerned in maintaining order against slave revolts as the creditor in Massachusetts was concerned in putting down Shays’ ‘desperate debtors.’” This proved to be a precarious time for the new nation’s elite, which was exalting the virtues of freedom, liberty and democracy while simultaneously taking action to establish new and improved systems of domination. Insurrection was indeed a clear and present danger to the post-war aristocracy within this decentralized and tumultuous landscape.

In 1787 the Federalists in Congress called on state legislatures to send delegates to a Convention in Philadelphia for a single and stated purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation. Members of Congress quietly went to Philadelphia, with a majority of them intent on constructing a federal government powerful enough to protect their class interests. The first order of business, according to Gerald J. Fresia and Robert W. Hoffert, was for the convention delegates to agree to a secrecy clause concerning their decision-making deliberations. As reported by Beard, the delegates were not only acting to protect their personalty interests from foreign competitors, but as importantly, against the threat the domestic unpropertied masses posed to their wealth and power.

James Madison receives endless accolades for his enlightened roles in the founding of the United States, including the title of “Father of the Constitution.” Like most of the founding fathers, Madison was explicit in his undemocratic aims for the new nation. As documented by Steve Coffman, during the construction of the U.S. Constitution, when deliberating over two of the pillars of a substantive democracy—universal suffrage and the equal distribution of resources— Madison argued, “if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure,” and “agrarian law would soon take place,” one that distributes land to the landless. Therefore, according to Coffman, Madison argued, “our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country” through the protection of property rights. More explicitly, Madison went on to pronounce, “Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests” thus making the charge of government “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”

According to the Yale University political theorist Robert A. Dahl and author Daniel Lazare, under the terms of the Articles of Confederation, which was the law of the land during the Philadelphia Convention, the 1787 Constitution was, in fact, an illegal usurping. The Articles were clear in stipulating that there had to be unanimous approval of all thirteen states to approve constitutional change. Yet those who attended the Philadelphia convention unilaterally changed the ratification rule to nine states, which was by no coincidence the number of states that initially ratified the Constitution of 1787. This strategic and unconstitutional move on the part of the Federalists in Congress was an attempt to work around the significant opposition from Anti-federalists. Lazare went on to claim, “the assertion that ‘We the People do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America’ implies a right not only to create new frames of government but to abrogate old ones when they are no longer serving their purposes.”

Dahl and Beard point out that when it came to choosing delegates for the Philadelphia Convention, a large body of aristocrats were selected by state legislatures that were elected according to suffrage laws requiring “high property qualifications” relating to taxpayer status aligned with the amount or worth of one’s real property and/or personalty holdings. According to Beard, when delegates for the Convention were chosen, “representatives of personalty in the legislature were able by the sheer weight of their combined intelligence and economic power to secure delegates from the urban centres or allied with their interests.” Beard went on to explain, “Thus the heated popular discussion usually incident to such momentous political undertakings was largely avoided, an orderly and temperate procedure in the selection of delegates was rendered possible.” In essence, the majority of the new nation’s inhabitants and citizens were intentionally excluded from participating in the construction of the United States Constitution.

According to Coffman, when voting rights for citizens of the new nation were being decided, James Madison expressed his concern that if they were extended “equally to all…the rights of property or the claims of justice may be overruled by a majority without property.” John Jay, a Federalist “founding father” and a member of Congress who went on to become the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, is famous for making the intent of the Constitution even more explicit by boldly stating, “The people who own the country ought to govern it.” During deliberations on voting rights, James Madison expressed his belief that “freeholders of the country would be the safest depositors of republican liberty.” Within this context, Madison went on to caution his peers to consider the imminent rise of the industrial working-class and the threat they would pose to the nation’s “opulent” minority:

In future times a great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but any other sort of, property. These will either combine under the influence of their common situation: in which case, the rights of property & the public liberty, will not be secure in their hands.

Madison also expressed his concerns that if given suffrage rights, the ominous industrial masses could be coerced or bribed into doing the bidding of divergent ruling class political ambitions. As Madison put it, the unpropertied, “will become the tools of opulence & ambition.” Clearly one of Madison’s primary concerns was how the expansion of suffrage could undermine his desires to create a republican fiefdom.

Gouverneur Morris was an influential “founding father” and close ally of Madison who is often called the “Penman of the Constitution.” According to legal scholar Jennifer Nedelsky, Morris’s vision of the new nation was similar to his peers in that “public liberty” should not involve “direct participation in government.” Instead, according to Nedelsky, in Morris’s plan “the people… were not, in effect, to govern… they would choose their representatives and have the influence over them that frequent elections brought… [and] ‘in the course of things’ people would elect the great and wealthy as their representatives.”

An enthusiastic student of political economy, Morris was known for tirelessly working to ensure that the interconnected pillars of economic and political power of the new nation would be impermeable. In doing so, Morris envisioned and aggressively advocated for a market economy, one with a federal government that was constituted with the legal framework to ensure its permanency. Nedelsky went on to document how Morris was known for his “unqualified positions” that:

illuminate some of the most important and contested issues in American political thought: the status our Constitution accords… to private property, the relation between the values of republicanism and those of capitalism, and the distribution of economic and political power our system fosters.

While the Constitutional Convention’s secrecy clause conveniently provided cover for its authors’ anti-republican and anti-democratic intentions, Madison’s unapologetic and forthright style reveals how the Constitution was, in its own words, “a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.” Accordingly, Gordon S. Wood, explained, “the source of their difficulties came from too much local democracy, and that the solution was to limit this local democracy by erecting a more aristocratic structure over it.” The designers did allow for a semi-popular lower house of congress, yet counterbalanced with the advent of the U.S. Senate, which was to be elected by state legislatures with rotating terms of six years. The Senate should then be composed of, as Madison put it, “a portion of enlightened citizens whose limited number and firmness might seasonably interpose against impetuous councils.” According to Parenti, the founders often referenced the virtuous qualifications of “enlightened citizens” and “men of substance,” which served as code for those with the right race, gender, aristocratic breeding, wealth, education, and experience that bestowed one with a God given right to rule.

In all, seventy-four delegates were appointed by states to attend the Constitutional Convention while only fifty-five showed up, with many anti-federalists refusing to attend and a number leaving as it progressed, with others refusing to sign in protest. Rhode Island declined to send a delegate. Anti-federalists accused the Federalists of working to reproduce an order similar to the British Crown. In the end, this small group of opulent white men proceeded to draft the U.S, Constitution, which according to historian Gordon S. Wood, “was intrinsically an aristocratic document designed to check the democratic tendencies of the period.”

As documented by Wood, a number of Anti-Federalists agreed to ratify the U.S. Constitution only on condition that a bill of rights was included as a means to put limits on federal power. Federalists in Congress begrudgingly agreed, despite their opposition to the idea. Federalists were concerned that by making certain rights explicit “the people” would expect protections for those rights alone, thus limiting future interpretations of the Constitution. James Madison in particular felt that a declaration of such rights would be “parchment barriers” (superficial protections) and wanted to rely on the sturdier measures already in place. According to professor of political science Michael P Federici, by parchment barriers, Madison meant:

…the relationship between the written and unwritten constitutions. There are paper boundaries and limits, what the Framers called “parchment barriers”, and there are unwritten boundaries and limits that are not so much legal as they are cultural, ethical, and religious. The preservation of a constitutional order depends, to a great extent, on the preservation of the unwritten boundaries and limits.

From Madison’s perspective, the great protectors of the private rights of the opulent against an organized majority included the “extent of territory” spelled out in the Constitution which separated people geographically; along with the “multiplicity of interest” between the classes. To Madison these classes included, “those who are without property…those who are creditors, and those who are debtors… [a] landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest…actuated by different sentiments and views.” According to Madison:

If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure…the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.

Always the brilliant political operative, Madison took on the task of drafting a bill of rights with the belief that the disorderly demand for such rights was on the one hand a grave problem, yet also presented an opportunity for a strategic solution. His proposed amendments were jubilantly ratified in 1791, effectively thwarting Anti-Federalist efforts to alter the Constitution while successful garnering loyalty for the Constitution from “the great mass of the people.” According to the U.S. Constitutional scholar Robert A. Goldwin, by engendering a sturdy “national sentiment” in support of the Constitution, Madison:

…took the decisive step toward establishing an independent force in the society, a devotion to the Constitution powerful enough to restrain a malevolent majority. Madison saw that the proposed amendments could make the Constitution universally revered…he saw the Constitution itself, not the amendments, as the sturdy barrier to fend off majority oppression and defend private rights. A bill of rights added to the intact Constitution would bring to it the only thing it presently lacked – the support of the whole people.

Madison not only outwitted the Anti-Federalists, but more ominously, he constructed a highly effective hegemonic instrument whereby the Bill of Rights would be widely considered as a sacred and uncontestable scroll embodying the epic virtues of U.S. democracy.

A Government “Over the People”

According to Goldwin and Kaufman and Blau and Moncada at its core, the U.S. Constitution outlines all the things the federal government cannot do, known as negative rights. Paul Finkelman describes the difference between negative and positive rights as being “freedom from” versus “freedom to.” According to Charles Fried, “a negative right is a right that something not be done to one, that some particular imposition be withheld.”

Simply, the founders encoded negative rights into the U.S. Constitution to ensure that government would protect the property rights bestowed upon “the minority of the opulent” by divine authority. In doing so, according to Cass Sunstein, negative rights bolster the ideology and rule of law of free-market capitalism. In terms of the founders’ Constitution, Sunstein interprets the intent of negative rights in important ways:

Most of the so-called negative rights require governmental assistance, not governmental abstinence. Consider, for example, the right to private property. As Bentham wrote, “Property and law are born and must die together. Before the laws, there was no property: take away the laws, all property ceases.” As we know and live it, private property is both created and protected by law; it requires extensive governmental assistance. The same point holds for the other foundation of a market economy, the close sibling of private property: freedom of contract. For that form of freedom to exist, it is extremely important to have reliable enforcement mechanisms in the form of civil courts.

Cornell professor of law Laura Underkuffler also emphasized in 2003 that the “idea of the Constitution as a charter of negative rights – and of the right to the protection of property as simply one of those rights – is an entrenched feature of American political and legal discourse.” New Jersey Deputy Attorney General Gezim Bajrami confirmed in 2013, “Time and time again, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government has no affirmative constitutional obligations to the public.”

According to Finkleman, positive rights necessitate “affirmative obligations on the part of government to fulfill the right.” Therefore, positive rights enable a nation-state’s constitution to guarantee a political economy that prioritizes egalitarianism in the social, political, cultural, economic and environmental realms. Positive rights enable government to proactively intervene to ensure universal and equitable access to a living income, housing, holistic education, health care, nutritious food, clean water and a healthy and sustainable environment. Positive rights can empower (not hinder) government to forcefully protect individuals and groups of people from forms of domination and targeted violence. As CeÂcile Fabre emphasizes, a nation-state constituted by positive rights would need to guarantee “that a democratic majority should not be able to repeal these rights and that certain institutions, such as the judiciary, should be given the power to strike down laws passed by the legislature that are in breach of those rights.”

Instead, the founders constructed the U.S. Constitution to forever deter emancipatory strivings and collective interests that are inherent to egalitarian societies.

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The Bill of Rights only reinforced negative rights based prohibitions on Congress concerning intervention in the press, speech, religion, assembly, bearing of arms, etc. By doing so, these purported “civil liberties” fortify the Constitution’s undemocratic foundations and its primary function of harnessing the majoritarian menace to further buttress, both legally and ideologically, the primacy of property rights. As Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals stressed in 1983, “the Constitution is a charter of negative rather than positive liberties… The men who wrote the Bill of Rights were not concerned that Government might do too little for the people but that it might do too much to them.”

According to Daniel Lazare, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights assign responsibility for civil liberties to the Supreme Court, essentially relieving the semi-elected branches of government, chiefly Congress “institutionally irresponsible” and civil liberties “de-politicized.” Lazare went on to explain:

Thus was born the peculiar rhythm of American politics in which politicians or the people at large go on periodic rampages in which they lynch, terrorize, and generally trample democratic rights until they are finally brought up short by the courts. Then everyone involved congratulates themselves that the system has worked, that the abuse has been corrected, that the majority has been reined in— until some new eruption sets the cycle going again.

Furthermore, the rights of speech, press, assembly, etc., are the means by which the commercial and propertied class instills their ideological, political, economic and social agenda via a free-marketplace of ideas; whereby access is determined by one’s wealth, race, gender, religion and influence. Not coincidentally, the Bill of Rights only applies to federal and state government action, not to the actions of private business and its agents. All in all, “the commons” became the property of the opulent.

According to Michael Parenti, the U.S. Constitution created a form of government and a political system that prevented “the people” from finding horizontal cohesion and instead “was designed to dilute their vertical force, blunting its upward thrust upon government by interjecting indirect and staggered forms of representation.” To do so, according to historian Morton White, a system of checks was constructed to safeguard against Madison’s expressed fears of “agrarian attempts” and “symptoms of a leveling spirit” by “the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings.”

The Autocratic First Amendment

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is widely heralded as the foundational gem of the Bill of Rights and the unambiguous signifier of “American Freedom and Democracy” It reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

However, it can also be regarded as one of the most duplicitous instruments of U.S. hegemony.

In 1799, Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth made it clear that based on English common law, “this country remains the same as it was before the Revolution.” Eight years earlier, with this understanding, the founders applied English common-law when drafting the First Amendment, specifically in terms of the doctrine of “no prior restraint.”

In 1769 William Blackstone, the celebrated “compiler of English law” and major influence on the founding fathers, explained the doctrine of no prior restraint:

The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state; but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every free man has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press; but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous or illegal, he must take the consequences of his own temerity.

Thus, the First Amendment follows the directive of no prior restraint by prohibiting government from forbidding a “free man” from expressing the “sentiments he pleases before the public.” Yet, if the government determines such “sentiments” to be seditious libel after the fact, prosecution is permissible under the U.S. Constitution. As Howard Zinn put it, to this day the First Amendment under no prior restraint has an important caveat in that:

You can say whatever you want, print whatever you want. The government cannot stop you in advance. But once you speak or write it, if the government decides to make certain statements “illegal,” or to define them as “mischievous” or even just “improper,” you can be put in prison.

This little known yet significant twist on American freedom of expression not only criminalizes dissent after the fact, it also serves the purpose of having a powerful chilling effect in advance. Zinn goes on to explain how, “An ordinary person, unsophisticated in the law, might respond, ‘You say you won’t stop me from speaking my mind–no prior restraint. But if I know it will get me in trouble, and so remain silent, that is prior restraint.”

Yet, in the subsequent two centuries, the U.S. federal government (including the Supreme Court) has also successfully restricted freedom of expression in advance under the rationale of “national security,” most often relating to those who attempt to expose the nation’s nefarious covert and undemocratic activities around the globe. While the First Amendment is explicit in that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech,” just seven years after Congress passed the amendment, Congress turned around and did just that in 1798 with the Alien and Sedition Acts.

President John Adams and other Federalist leaders expedited the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts under the rational that French and Irish revolutions would spark an egalitarian revolution at home, incited by French and Irish immigrant agitators and foreign spies. Feeding this narrative, a Federalist newspaper of the time claimed Jacobin (egalitarian) French tutors were attempting to corrupt America’s youth, “to make them imbibe, with their very milk, as it were, the poison of atheism and disaffection.” Long-time Massachusetts politician and Federalist Harrison Gray Otis declared in 1797 that he “did not wish to invite hordes of wild Irishmen, nor the turbulent and disorderly of all parts of the world, to come here with a view to disturb our tranquility, after having succeeded in the overthrow of their own governments” and landing in the U.S. “to cavil against the Government, and to pant after a more perfect state of society.”

The Alien Acts included “An Act Concerning Aliens” (enacted June 25, 1798, with a two-year expiration date) which authorized the president to deport any resident alien considered “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” The Alien Acts also included “An Act Respecting Alien Enemies” (or Alien Enemies Act), which was enacted on July 6, 1798 (with no expiration date), authorizing the president to detain and deport resident aliens whose home countries were at war with the United States.

Enacted July 14, 1798, with an expiration date of March 3, 1801, the Sedition Act applied to U.S. citizens, authorizing the prosecution, imprisonment or large fine of any person who:

…shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against United States, their people or government.

As Zinn pointed out, “the Sedition Act was a direct violation of the Constitution. But here we get our first clue to the inadequacy of words on [“parchment”] paper in ensuring the rights of citizens.”

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was revised and further codified by Congress with the passing of the Espionage Act of 1917. This reaffirmation of the duplicitous nature of the founders’ Constitution and governing structures was intended to stifle growing resistance against social conditions domestically and the expansion of U.S. imperialism, particularly on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War I. The Espionage Act of 1917 in part read:

Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall wilfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies and whoever when the United States is at war, shall wilfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall wilfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service or of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both.

As a means to more effectively crush growing dissent domestically, in 1918 (after the U.S. entered WWI) the Sedition Act was passed as an amendment to the Espionage Act, further restricting free expression. It read in part:

Whoever, when the United States is at war… shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements… or incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct… the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, or… shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States… or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully… urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production… or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than 20 years, or both.

During World War I, federal prosecutors enacted the Espionage Act in over 2,000 cases. While no convictions resulted from charges of spying or sabotage, 1,055 convictions resulted from prohibitions on free speech under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, largely targeting labor leaders, civil rights activists, Black and leftist journalists and publishers, war critics, pacifists, anti-conscription activists, socialists, communists, anarchists and civil libertarians.

In 1919 the Supreme Court actively safeguarded the Espionage Act against constitutional challenges in Schenck v. United States. This case involved Charles T. Schenck, the secretary of the Socialist Party of America, who was convicted by a lower court under the Espionage Act after engaging in counter military recruitment activities by distributing leaflets that encouraged prospective military draftees to refuse military service. The first side of Schenck’s leaflet argued that the Conscription Act (the draft) violated the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition on involuntary servitude and was a “monstrous wrong against humanity in the interest of Wall Street’s chosen few.” It urged recipients to “petition for the repeal of the act” because the war was being spun by “cunning politicians and a mercenary capitalist press.” Schenck appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, arguing that his First Amendment rights were violated. The Court ruled against Schenck, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. stating:

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic… The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Thus, the well-known legal rationale against “falsely shouting fire in a theatre” became a metaphor for the limits of free speech in America, namely serving as code against dissent that disrupts U.S. hegemony. Schenck went on to serve six months in a federal prison.

During the same period, the U.S. Supreme Court also upheld the conviction of labor leader and Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Eugene Debs, who was charged under the Espionage Act for making an anti-war speech in 1918. Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison. This was not the first time Debs had been imprisoned for his “un-American” activities, yet the Espionage Act served its purpose in making it easier to silence Debs (and other dissidents), hopefully once and for all.

The Supreme Court case of Stokes v. United States (1920) involved the prosecution of reproductive rights and labor activist Rose Pastor Stokes, who was given a ten year prison sentence for simply writing in a local newspaper, “No government which is for the profiteers can also be for the people, and I am for the people, while the government is for the profiteers.”

In 1917 Chandler Owen and A. Philip Randolph, the publishers of the Black political and literary magazine The Messenger, were arrested under the Espionage Act when they wrote:

Our claim is to appeal to reason, to lift our pens above the cringing demagogy of the times… Patriotism has no appeal to us; justice has. Party has no weight with us; principle has. Loyalty meaningless; it depends on what one is loyal to. Prayer is not one of our remedies; it depends on what one is praying for. We consider prayer as nothing more than a fervent wish; consequently, the merit and worth of a prayer depend upon what the fervent wish is.

Some Supreme Court decisions that reinforced the Espionage and Sedition Acts did not target radicals or dissidents. One such case involved the United States v. Nagler in 1918, which led to the conviction of the Assistant Secretary of State for the State of Wisconsin, Louis B. Nagler. Nagler was prosecuted after simply telling a group of YMCA or the Red Cross canvassers for the war effort who showed up at his office door, “I am through contributing to your private grafts. There is too much graft in these subscriptions. No, I do not believe in the work of the YMCA or the Red Cross, for I believe they are nothing but a bunch of grafters.”

In the case of the United States v. The Spirit of ’76, Robert Goldstein, the producer of the patriotic Revolutionary War movie The Spirit of ’76, was charged under the Espionage Act in 1917 for his film’s graphically unfavorable portrayal of Great Britain, which was America’s primary World War I ally. Federal prosecutors charged that Goldstein had deliberately made a pro-German movie to impugn America’s ally, incite disloyalty and obstruct military conscription. Goldstein who was Jewish (Anti-Semitism was rife in the U.S.) and of German descent, claimed that his intent in making the film was to make money and boost the patriotic mood of the country. He was given a ten-year prison sentence and fined $5,000.

The Sedition Act was repealed in 1921 while the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and the Espionage Act of 1917 have endured into the 21st century. According to Emily Peterson, “The Espionage Act is so vague and poorly defined in its terms, that it’s hard to say exactly what it does and does not cover.”

Diluting the Impact of Popular Sentiments

The Constitution dictates that an Electoral College, not the general electorate or a majority of citizen voters, will choose the U.S. president. Within this undemocratic scheme, voters are actually casting a vote for presidential “electors” tied to the major elite political parties of each state, the numbers of which are based on the number of state Congressional seats. These electors are collectively known as the Electoral College. According to Article II of the Constitution, “Each state shall appoint, such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in the Congress.” Translation: state legislatures, not citizens within a state, decide which presidential candidate will receive the state’s electoral votes. These appointed electors, who make up the anonymous Electoral College, are in essence political establishment insiders, who are subject to lobbying efforts, and in many states can roguely decide who they vote for, or if they will even vote at all. According to FairVote, for a presidential candidate to win an election within this system, one must receive over half of the Electoral College votes (in the 21st century, that would be 270 electoral votes out of the 538 national electors). The result is that presidential elections are largely symbolic exercises intended to keep the masses tied to the established order, where the democratic principle of one-person one-vote is prohibited.

As Dahl and Lazare point out, the U.S. Supreme Court was established to exist outside of any form of democratic deliberation and public scrutiny. Instead, imperious and impervious Supreme Court justices are appointed for life by a president and confirmed by a semi-aristocratic Senate (to this day), of which was chosen by state legislatures until 1913. The more popularly elected (yet also largely wealthy) House of Representatives were excluded from these deliberations. This leaves the Supreme Court—the least democratic branch of government—responsible for deciding if and how the rights of the masses are recognized and dispersed, while “elected” representatives stand idle. Accordingly Lazare notes, “rallying behind the Supreme Court” means “rallying behind the Constitution in toto” and “ignoring the constitutional system’s many unsavory aspects.”

The founders’ crafty and abstruse power-sharing arrangement made it difficult to determine where true authority lay, be it in Congress, the Presidency, the Supreme Court or the citizenry at the municipal, state or federal level. As Lazare put it, instead of having a form of government that would serve as “an instrument that ‘We the People’ would create and shape to further our own rule” the Constitution solidified a system of government intended to “create and shape the people in order to further its own rule.” Instead of being a government “of the people” it would be a government “over the people.” Parenti goes on to explain that in keeping with their desire to disenfranchise the majority, the founders included these “auxiliary precautions” that were “designed to fragment power without democratizing it.” Parenti goes on to explain:

In separating the executive, legislative, and judiciary functions and then providing a system of checks and balances among the various branches, including staggered elections, executive veto, Senate confirmation of appointments and ratification of treaties, and a bicameral legislature, they hoped to dilute the impact of popular sentiments. They also contrived an elaborate and difficult process for amending the Constitution.

Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution plays a crucial role in the founders’ undemocratic design by requiring a process whereby a proposed Constitutional amendment has to first pass a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate, or through a convention called by Congress based on a request from two-thirds of the states. If a proposed amendment successfully traverses its way through either pathway, it then has to be ratified by three-quarters of state legislatures. As University of Chicago Law School professor Eric Posner describes it, “Any proposal to amend the Constitution is idle because it’s effectively impossible… an amendment requires a supermajority twice—the pig must pass through two pythons.” Two hundred years later, after 11,539 proposed amendments, only 27 have been ratified. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments which expanded status rights to former slaves, passed only because the defeated and occupied South was strong-armed into ratifying them, yet as examined later, were not compelled to enforce them. Between 1870 and today only 12 amendments have been enacted, with the last one taking 203 years to be ratified. Posner goes to point out how this labyrinth has led to a reliance on begging the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution in new ways by hiring “lawyers to formulate their proposals as already reflected in the Constitution rather than argue that the Constitution got the position wrong and so should be changed.” According to Gordon Wood, the very concept of democracy was hijacked and appropriated by the U.S. Constitution in that:

By the end of the debate over the Constitution, it was possible for the Federalists to describe the new national government, even with its indirectly elected president and Senate, as “a perfectly democratical form of government.” The houses of representatives lost their exclusive connection with the people. Representation was now identified simply with election; thus, all elected officials, and, for some, even those not elected, such as judges, were considered somehow “representative” of the people. Democracy rapidly became a generic label for all American government.

In addition to the undemocratic federal government, all 50 states would, in time, establish state constitutions modeled after the federal constitution (to varying degrees), with legislative and executive branches that are semi-popularly elected to develop and administer policies and laws; with state Supreme Courts that preside over legal appeals. State constitutions also establish mechanisms for local governance at the county, municipal or township level where voters popularly elect some variation of town or city managers and/or councils to make and administer local policies and ordinances. It is at the municipal level that the more direct forms of democracy were possible, at least for white men. The town meeting model, where all eligible voters meet to make local governance decisions and elect officials to implement their decisions, was a common form of local governance during the 18th and 19th centuries. State and municipal governments also have a sordid history concerning suffrage rights, often disenfranchising groups of people based on race, ethnicity, religion, class and gender.

The original Constitution left complete discretion to individual states in determining voter qualifications, rules on absentee voting, polling hours and election funding. In most states there is a lot of leeway given to counties in crafting their own ballots, designing and implementing their own voter education programs, deciding how they will handle overseas ballots, the ability to hire and train poll workers, choosing polling locations and in how to maintain their voter registration lists.

Over time (between 1870 to 1972), with the enactment of the 14th, 15th, 19th 23rd, 24th and 26th Constitutional Amendments, various forms of legal discrimination were explicitly prohibited when establishing qualifications for suffrage. It is still legally permissible for states to deny the “right to vote” for other reasons and many have effectively done so as a means to continue to disenfranchise groups of people based on race, ethnicity and class. The 17th Amendment, which enabled U.S. Senators to be directly elected, did not result from popular democratic strivings. Instead, it resulted from pundit and legislator frustrations over corruption, instability, conflict and deadlock due to the indirect process hampering legislative efficiency. In her book Electoral Dysfunction: A Survival Manual for American Voters, Victoria Bassetti sums up suffrage rights this way:

The original document establishing our government acknowledges and weaves slavery deeply into our society. Women cannot vote. Two of the three major federal officers, President and Senator, are not voted on by the people. And there is not a right to vote in the Constitution. The word ‘vote’ appears in the Constitution as originally drafted only in relation to how representatives, senators, and presidential electors perform their duties. Representatives vote. But the people’s vote is not mentioned.

The Bill of Rights did not change this fact. Over two hundred years later the Supreme Court appointed George Bush to be president, and in the process reaffirmed this point in their decision by stating, “The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.” The double rub here is that the court was referring to a citizen’s rights to vote for Electoral College electors, not the right to vote directly for a presidential candidate.

While allowing citizens to feel as though they have a voice in the political system, the form of “democracy” outlined in the Constitution is clearly designed to impede the citizenry from determining both domestic and foreign policy. Ultimately, the founders crafted a system that allowed select groups of people to have the right to citizenship, privileging a smaller proportion of them to indirectly choose the best “men of substance,” filtered through narrowly prescribed partisan commitments as a means to preserve the wealth and power of the post-revolutionary ruling class. Within this constitutional framework, hegemonic cultural scripts tied to institutional authority perpetuate systemic inequities. In a constitutional republic without positive constitutional rights that mandate parity of political participation and economic redistribution, whilst remedying existing cultural prohibitions on recognition and representation rights; social equity and economic equality will persistently be denied, undermined and contested.

“Unfit to associate with the white race”

One can choose to believe the various cultural myths about how the freedom loving founders despised slavery, but did not work to end it based on a variety of factors, including: timing, not wanting to disrupt a widely accepted and profitable institution, and the need to accommodate the southern plantation system. No matter the rationale, the truth is that it was not in the founders’ political and economic interests to do so, nor is there evidence that they had the moral capacity to end one of the most horrific enterprises in human history. What is clear is that the U.S. Constitution was written to protect slavery while empowering slaveholders in numerous ways. This was demonstrated by General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney’s boastings in front of the South Carolina House of Representatives following the Constitutional Convention about how slavery was secured within the Constitution:

We have a security that the general government can never emancipate them [slaves], for no such authority is granted and it is admitted, on all hands, that the general government has no powers but what are expressly granted by the Constitution, and that all rights not expressed were reserved by the several states.

As documented by Barbara Fields, the Constitution’s three-fifths clause, states were allowed to count three-fifths of their slaves in apportioning representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Electoral College. This effectively increased the political power of southern states and thus granted greater protections for the institution of slavery. This disproportionate political power through the Electoral College led to Thomas Jefferson’s 1800 presidential win. The Constitution also had a provision (fugitive slave clause) that aided slaveholders in recovering fugitive slaves, particularly those who sought sanctuary in “free” states and territories. It protected slave-owners rights to human property and made the act of aiding a fugitive slave a constitutional offense. The Second Amendment is also considered to have been, in part, a means to protect slave-owners from slave insurrections.

Another Constitutional provision focused on the highly lucrative enterprise that was the Atlantic slave trade. It read in part, “[t]he migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808.” It also allowed for “a tax or duty” to be “imposed on such importation…” for as long as the trade remained legal. This did not mean that slavery was to be abolished in 1808, but only that the import of new slaves would be discontinued.

As with settler colonialism, America’s domestic slave trade is the story of the founding of the United States. As many scholars have documented, including Du Bois, McInnis and Finkelman, the slave trade was a major economic engine, which fueled the prosperity of the new nation, with profits from enslaved people flowing to many locations in the North and South. Traders and slave owners throughout the South profited by selling human property while others profited from the forced labor it provided in the cotton and sugar fields. So did intermediary suppliers along with carriers in the steamboat, railroad and shipping industries. Naturally, northern capitalists profited as investors in banks in the exchange of money for people as did the companies that provided insurance for the owners’ investments in enslaved labor. So did foreign investors in Southern securities, some of which were issued on mortgaged slaves. The hub of the nation’s cotton textile industry was based in New England, where “enlightened” gentry enriched themselves from the misery of southern slave labor.

Following its Constitutional mandate, the Act of 1807 was the legislation that officially ended U.S. participation in the international slave trade, but not the domestic slave trade. It levied heavy fines and possible imprisonment on those who attempted to import slaves to the United States. This piece of legislation was underfunded and often not enforced, and when it was enforced, it was another source of revenue with its stiff fines and valuable legal merchandise. These realities enabled a smaller yet profitable human smuggling industry to exist in the U.S. until the middle of the 19th century. When illegal smugglers were caught, their human merchandise was seized and sold to U.S. slave owners (Du Bois, Fehrenbacher and Finkelman). The Constitution would continuously be used until the Civil War to defend the institution of slavery from federal intervention and actions taken by an increasingly militant abolition movement.

In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled on the Dred Scott v. Sanford case, based on Scott’s lawsuit to gain his and his family’s freedom in the slave state of Missouri after they had previously lived in a free state and territory. In delivering the majority decision against Scott, Chief Justice Roger Taney held that under the terms of the U.S. Constitution, Black people “could never be citizens of the United States.” Taney explained that when the Constitution was ratified, Blacks were “regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights that the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his own benefit.”

The standing of free Black Americans under the Constitution remained vague for decades to come. The Bill of Rights did not defend free Black Americans from municipal and state laws intent on depriving them of (parchment barrier) Constitutional rights. This cultural and legal reality set the stage for Jim Crow laws in the South and its manifestations nationwide into the 21st century.

In an 1852 Fourth of July speech, the formidable Fredrick Douglas called out the true nature of the institution of slavery in the United States:

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

Conclusion

While the Bill of Rights and a few subsequent amendments have provided some democratizing effects, they have strictly been limited to affirmative remedies for injustices (instead of transformative remedies associated with dismantling). These tend to be reformist in nature and as Nancy Fraser frames such measures, are “aimed at correcting inequitable outcomes of social arrangements without disturbing the underlying framework that generates them.” Affirmative “remedies” are thus akin to negative rights and often come from state and private powers making limited and ultimately temporary accommodations to justice-seeking collective struggles, frequently through the utilization of disruptive tactics and strategies. In contrast, the inherently violent cultural, political and economic structures that are protected by the U.S. Constitution prohibit transformative remedies intended (analogous to positive rights) to eliminate the root causes of social inequity and economic inequality. According to historian Howard Zinn the American Revolution and its resulting Constitution, “was a work of genius” in that it “created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command.”

At its core, the U.S. Constitution was designed to safeguard a settler colonial society overseen by the supreme laws of capitalism, Christianity, white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. By doing so, it entrenched deep structural disparities in participation that subvert collective strivings for social, economic and political justice. This denial of the basic means and opportunities for all inhabitants of a society to directly contest and deliberate as equals violates the very nature of public reason, the principle by which liberal democracies define themselves (as the U.S. defines itself). Moreover, for a society to be authentically democratic—as an essential determinant of justice—parity of participation is required to serve as the idiom of public contestation and deliberation whereby status equality and the equitable distribution of wealth can be attained. This would require a constitutional framework derived from the principles and practices of participatory parity, where positive rights as well as equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are indisputable.

With the advent of the U.S. Constitution and its consolidation of cultural, political, and economic power; slave owners and “captains of industry” alike were made to feel more secure knowing that a state or territorial governor could rely on a swift federal response when domestic disturbances was beyond the control of local police and state militia (Beard).

With the arrival of the 19th century, mercantilism and the smaller agrarian economy of the settler colonies of the U.S. were quickly being toppled, largely influenced by the 1776 publication of Scottish economist Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith’s magnum opus became the recipe for free-market capitalism, and is said to have been enthusiastically embraced by the founders of the new republic, and became the ideological and structural framework for the U.S. political economy. In Wealth of Nations Smith affirmed, over a decade prior to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, that a, “Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

Decades after the drafting of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams proudly declaring, “from 15 to 20 legislatures of our own, in action for 30 years past, have proved that no fears of an equalization of property are to be apprehended from them.” Indeed, the U.S. Constitution was serving its purpose in guaranteeing that inequality would remain the supreme law of the land—at an increasing rate—far into the future. In the decades ahead, as industrial capitalism flourished and the settler colonial empire expanded, so would U.S. nationalism, constructing a base and superstructure Jefferson and his peers could have only dreamed of; one that would perfectly buttress the despotic structures they deeply embedded within their beloved Constitution.

Claudia Gay and "First Ones" in an Empire of Lies and Annihilation

[Pictured: Harvard University. Credit: BLOOMBERG]

By Kwaku Aurelien

The January 2nd announcement of Claudine Gay’s resignation from the position of President at Harvard University has caused quite a stir in American society, especially in the context of our current historical moment and the immense pressure under which Gay made her decision. Black Americans of prominence such as Jemele Hill took to social media in the short aftermath of the news coming out to defend Gay’s credentials against those who would label her an “Affirmative Action hire,” someone who made it to their position on the basis of their race rather than on merit. There are also tweets such as the one by Marc Lamont Hill below, reading, “The next president of Harvard University MUST be a Black woman.”

In response, I have a few questions for Professor Hill. For one, after all the publicized scrutiny Claudine Gay was subject to, why should a Black woman, or any Black person for that matter, want to be President of Harvard University? Is it because of the name brand value of Harvard University? How much should that matter to Black people given the hell we just saw one of our own go through in what is supposed to be a position of power? But more importantly, what does a Black woman being President of Harvard University do for Black people, or for the Black student population at Harvard, one member of which wrote in this astounding piece for the Harvard Political Review how they’ve been questioned on how they got into the university, and on how they’ve called for Harvard to stop its commemoration of slave owners and profiteers.

Malcolm X is famous for saying, “The White man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and real justice.” My question to Marc Lamont Hill is, will a Black woman being the President of Harvard guarantee real justice for its Black students by making it more inclusive and benevolent towards them, or will that Black woman be nothing more than a symbol? 

The below clip is from a 1992 lecture delivered at Florida International University by Kwame Ture. If you don’t know him by that name, you may know him by his original name, Stokely Carmichael. In the clip, Ture — a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Black Panther Party, a founder of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) during the Civil Rights Movement, and a member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) upon moving to Africa — points out a gross contradiction within the Black community which persists to this day. Black people, who historically protest and battle against injustice as a mass, advance in American society strictly as individuals. Ture is adamant that if Black people struggle as a mass, the way to measure the progress of Black people in America is to evaluate whether or not the Black masses have advanced.

Advancement is measured qualitatively, not quantitatively; it is measured by the quality of life enjoyed by the Black masses, not by how many Black people do X or do Y. If the masses have not advanced, there is no progress at all. As Ture sees it, the advancement of Black individuals to prestigious jobs and positions has caused wool to be pulled over the eyes of those individuals. They become big-headed, and come to believe that by virtue of them being in their prestigious position, they are advancing the entirety of Black America.

At first listen, you might hear Ture say that there has been no progress for Black people since the 60s and think it’s a gross exaggeration of where we are and how far we’ve come. But what if I told you that, in 2008, PBS released a four-hour series called Unnatural Causes and an accompanying Health Equity Quiz, which showed that Black males in Harlem, New York had a lower life expectancy than males in Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations in the world? Or what if I told you that the median wealth of Black Americans may fall to zero by 2053 assuming current trends continue?

Taking those, among other, things into consideration, was Ture really that far off? Even if he was, the individualist way of thinking he criticizes falls apart under close inspection, and it is a way of thinking we must collectively abandon in this new year. If Claudine Gay’s experience has taught us anything it is that, in 2024, Black people still have no institutional power in America. Gay took office as Harvard’s first Black President on July 1, 2023, and by the second day of 2024, she resigned amidst the internal and external scrutiny levied her way. No Black organization in this country has power comparable to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which put its own tweet endorsing Gay’s departure from Harvard. With no institutional control, there is no way for Black people in positions of power to effectively own those positions. The position is not a right, but a privilege that can be yanked away at a whim. A good example I can provide is the wave of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives which came about as a direct consequence of the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020. Those initiatives are largely getting rolled back, corporations’ alibi for their withdrawal being that they have come under economic and political pressure from the right wing. I say none of what I say as an indictment of Claudine Gay, but rather as a call to action for my Black readers to demand better alternatives for themselves. Or alternatively, to put our heads together so that we may create better alternatives for ourselves.

There are Black faces in high faces worth condemning; however, therein lies the meaning of the title of this article: “Claudine Gay and ‘First Ones’ in an Empire of Lies & Annihilation.” Amidst a genocide in Gaza armed and funded by the United States government, within that government are the First Black Woman Vice President; the First Black Secretary of Defense, a Raytheon board member supposed to have been recused from the company for four years; and the First Black White House Press Secretary.

Palestinians, who have demonstrated solidarity with Black Americans against police violence on numerous occasions amidst their ethnic cleansing, had to listen to Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a Black woman and President Biden’s Ambassador to the United Nations, say that Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions has no place at the UN, and more recently to veto a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza with an unconditional release of all hostages on behalf of the United Empire. They have had to watch Karine Jean-Pierre attack Benjamin Netanyahu and AIPAC when it was convenient only to now be the one of the most visible spokespeople for an administration whose belligerence against them is finally making Americans pay attention to their plight.

It behooves us to care about the Palestinians’ plight, because the violence visited on them comes back to do us harm here at home. Black activists in Atlanta against the construction of “Cop City” have for years highlighted the relationship between the Atlanta Police Foundation and the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) program. GILEE is a policing exchange allowing for training between various sects of Georgia police and the IDF. One of the grosser tactics the IDF has exchanged with Georgia police under GILEE is firearm “racking.” To inspire fear, Israeli officers will draw the slide on their gun all the way back and then quickly release to send off a misfired round. This is what is being taught to Georgia officers, and you don’t have to be woke to know that Georgia’s Black residents are the ones who are going to be harassed the most with this behavior. Atlanta’s mayor, Andre Dickens, is a Black man, who identified as a progressive in the 2021 mayoral election, but who now pushes Cop City forward despite the sheer opposition to it from Weelaunee Forest communities, which are predominantly Black and/or low-income.

I tend to agree with the tweet below. The summer of 2020, which should have been an inflection point in this country’s history, became an opportunity upon which many Black people, middle class Black people especially, capitalized. “Black excellence,” which should have been a meaningful phrase illustrating the very best qualities of the Black community, became reason for Black individuals to perform acts they would nominally criticize White people for doing. These types will say that Black death has become commodified, and in the same vein become profiteers themselves.

“Black excellence” has become an effective tool in alienating Black individuals from the larger Black community. Take Claudine Gay; her role as university president effectively alienated her from the Black student population, members of which felt as though their right to free speech was unprotected and that they were easy targets of doxxing for their pro-Palestine advocacy. “Black excellence” has also made it exceedingly difficult for bourgeois Black folk to empathize with the plight of the Black poor and working class because they have developed opposing class interests and are unable or unwilling to put themselves in the shoes of those who don’t have what they have, and who bear the biggest burden of racism. I say this as a member of the Black middle class, mind you.

Too many of us have been or are all too eager to become Buffalo Soldiers for Empire, and we need to be called on it. Because if we intend on demonstrating true solidarity with Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Haiti and elsewhere, as so many are now claiming to do in their Instagram stories, it starts with us scrutinizing the role of Black faces in high places in perpetuating American imperial crimes.

We must acknowledge that our freedom fighters – which include names like Kwame Ture, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Ida B. Wells, Ella Baker, Angela Davis, and Assata Shakur – never wanted this for us. These individuals opposed imperialism not only on the grounds that our struggle is interconnected with those the world over, but also on the grounds that making war is morally reprehensible. They understood that humanity is indivisible, and that one segment of humanity being discriminated against automatically diminished the rest. They fought to elevate us, so that we could elevate humanity. Proof of which, in his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), Martin Luther King stated, “The wealthy nations of the world must promptly initiate a massive, sustained Marshall Plan for Asia, Africa and South America. If they would allocate just 2 percent of their gross national product annually for a period of ten or twenty years for the development of the underdeveloped nations, mankind would go a long way toward conquering the ancient enemy, poverty.” This would represent a constructive use of the United States’ vast resources, and it is indicative of the type of work we should be fighting for in the modern day. It is up to us now to follow the path our ancestors laid out for us, but we can only do it by honoring what they truly stood for, rather than just paying lip service to it.

We have to have the courage to speak truth to power, without regard for the consequences we think it may have in our social and professional lives. After what just happened to Dr. Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University, what excuse do any of us have to be afraid?

Kwaku Aurelien is a student at UConn School of Law and an intern for Friends of the Congo (@congofriends on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook), a Washington D.C. based advocacy organization for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).