Retirement Essays: Black Panther Christmas Party

This story is a chapter of a memoir focused on the insights I gained from interactions with certain notable people. All these stories are true. I admit, however, my memory may not be flawless.

Bobby Seale – Black Panther Christmas Party

My first ever trip by commercial airplane was cross-country to San Francisco at Christmas time 1967. I was barely 19 years old, a baby-faced, skinny kid at 120 pounds with a Beatle haircut. I almost always wore boot cut blue jeans, suede desert boots, a blue work shirt over white undershirt, and an army green Eisenhower jacket with a button on each chest pocket flap, a peace sign on the right, a draft resistance movement omega on the left.

I was excited but apprehensive. The purpose of the trip was to visit my girlfriend, Judy. We fell in love during the summer after my senior year in high school. She was a year younger than me. It was my first serious love affair. Our relationship survived and even flourished during my freshman year in college. The next spring Judy was accepted at Stanford University.

During the summer I found myself foolishly trying to convince her not to go to a first rank college on the west coast. I was afraid our relationship would not survive the separation. At first we wrote each other daily. Gradually her letters became less frequent. Hoping against hope, I gave up my college meal plan and used the money for a plane ticket.

I tried to clear my head as I flew west. On reflection, I had to admit that I could no longer see a joint future for us. I had recently gotten deeply involved in the peace movement. I was making new friends. Although the idea of breaking up was impossibly sad for me, it was time to face the truth. I resolved to tell Judy that we should break up. All during the rest of the flight I couldn’t get a popular Jefferson Airplane song out of my head.

When the truth is found

To be lies

And all the joy

Within you dies.

Don't you want somebody to love?

Don't you need somebody to love?

Wouldn't you love somebody to love?

You better find somebody to love.

Judy met me at the airport. Outside her sister waited in a green and white Volkswagen van. She worked for a civil rights organization somewhere in the bay area. Judy often spent weekends in a spare bedroom in her sister’s downtown apartment.

The closet-sized spare room was in the back. There was almost no furniture except for a futon on the floor and a small desk with a hard wooden chair. The only light came from a floor lamp next to the desk. I was so exhausted I fell asleep as soon as I lay down.

I woke the next morning in full daylight. Judy was not in the room. I looked out the single window onto a tiny courtyard where the trashcans were stored. Judy came in with coffee. She pointed out an avocado tree in the courtyard. I’d never seen a real avocado tree before.

As we ate granola and drank more coffee in the small kitchen I talked about all the iconic sites I wanted to visit: Fisherman’s Wharf, City Lights Bookstore, Chinatown, cable cars, and, of course, Haight-Ashbury. We could walk to economize. I think I had about $25 in my pocket.

Out of the blue Judy looked at me sadly, took my hand and said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, dear Ed, but I’ve got to tell you right now. I think we should break up.”

I don’t know if she could see the relief flash across my face. I told her I understood and had reluctantly reached the same conclusion on the flight. We agreed that although we still loved each other, there was really no other course. With that decision thankfully out of the way, we made plans for our final few days together.

I remember cool fog in Golden Gate Park. Judy and I walked to the narrow stretch of the park called the Panhandle a few mornings in a row to take in the scene. So this was Haight-Ashbury, the reputed epicenter of the counter-culture. As the fog burned off, handfuls of men and women with long hair and colorful clothing began to populate the benches near us.

The previous summer up to 100,000 young people from around the world flocked to the Haight-Ashbury district. The media called it “the Summer of Love.” It was a true blossoming of the hippie culture. Golden Gate Park was its heart with free music, free food, free drugs and free love. I saw it on TV and in Time magazine. Young people like me were going to save the world by living lives free from the culture of capitalism and death. The Mamas and the Papas sang:

If you’re going to San Francisco

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

By that fall the positive energy was waning. The hippies who still inhabited the Haight were out of money and mostly homeless, drifting from couch to couch. Drug addiction had also taken a toll. We saw a lot of people who seemed permanently zoned out walking around in bell-bottoms and beads carrying their few belongings in a guitar case.

I felt like I had arrived at a long-anticipated party just as everyone was leaving. On October 6, 1967 resident activists had staged a mock funeral in Golden Gate Park. The message was that the revolution of peace and love needed to transform the culture of death could not be accomplished by traveling to San Francisco. Cultural transformation would only happen when the ideas of peace and love were successfully carried to all of America.

I agreed wholeheartedly.

For a Christmas present, Judy’s sister gave us tickets to a concert at the Fillmore Auditorium. We drove over there in the VW bus. I can’t remember the names of the two psychedelic rock bands we heard that night. What I do vividly remember was the total sensory overload created by the lightshow.

A dozen or so shadowy figures were on stage behind the band fiddling with a variety of light and image sources. I counted five overhead projectors, two movie projectors, and about a dozen slide projectors. Spotlights with rotating color wheels illuminated the band.

The overhead projectors were each fitted with a tray of liquid floating with blobs of color. When the music started the operators sloshed a combination of water, oil, and liquid dye around in time with the music to make fantastic pulsing patterns on the musicians, the walls, the dancing crowd and the ceiling.

The slide projectors were aimed at random spots on the walls. The slides changed rapidly and seemed roughly choreographed to the music. Some slides were scenes of nature, but most were hand-painted with abstract images. Some contained popular slogans like “Peace now!” “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” and “Fuck the draft.” The movie projectors cast blurry rectangles of fast moving images that changed erratically. I soon felt like my brain was melting.

Everyone was dancing. Along the left wall a group of seven women in classic hippie clothes complete with braided leather headbands held hands forming a circle. They moved slowly at first so the crowd had a chance to get out of the way. In less than a minute they were whirling almost out of control. It was beautiful. Legs and long colorful skirts flying, they whooped at the top of their lungs. They seemed to levitate until they bumped into a guy who wasn’t paying attention and all fell in an ecstatic heap.

In a back corner I saw two men sitting on the floor with their arms on each other’s shoulders. One was laughing hysterically and the other crying uncontrollably. I asked a guy by the door if he thought they were all right. “Bad trip, man,” was all he said.

I completely lost track of time. At some point Judy’s sister magically appeared and dragged us out into the fresh air. She said she had run into some activist friends who insisted that she go to a Christmas party across the bay in Oakland. We climbed into the van and set off.

It must have been late by the time we reached Oakland. We drove through mostly deserted streets. A few scattered places were decorated with Christmas lights. The whole neighborhood was pretty beat up. I was glad I was not on foot.

We found the address. We climbed some rickety steps to an apartment above a store. I could hear the Four Tops blasting from the stereo in sweet harmony before we even opened the door.

Now if you feel that you can't go on

Because all of your hope is gone

And your life is filled with much confusion

Until happiness is just an illusion

And your world around is crumblin' down

Darling, reach out, come on girl, reach on out for me…

In the living room a crowd was dancing, eating cold fried chicken, drinking wine and laughing. A small Christmas tree twinkled in the corner next to the front window but the main decorations were the black power posters on the walls. Here was Malcolm X pointing forward with the caption: “We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary.” On the facing wall was a garish red poster featuring the chubby face of Chairman Mao declaring: “Power proceeds from the barrel of a gun.” Next to the entrance to the kitchen someone had crudely painted a large black fist right on the wall.

The living room was too crowded for me. I worked my way to the kitchen. A dozen or so white folks were clustered in the back corner. They looked like college students to me. A guy with long brown hair held in place with a rolled up bandana and wearing a colorful dashiki shirt grabbed me a cup of some cheap red wine. I desperately needed to find a bathroom and a quieter place.

I followed a black woman wearing jeans and a shiny red sequined top up the stairs to the third floor. I found the bathroom. When I came out I turned into a large room that might have been a bedroom. It was a lot quieter there. I couple dozen people stood around, mostly African Americans.

Four young black men sat on folding chairs with their backs to the wall at the far end of the room. They were all dressed alike: black boots, black pants, blue shirts and leather jackets. One of them was wearing a black beret. I noticed four rifles propped against the wall behind them.

After a few minutes a guy with a modest Afro and a little mustache stood up.

“Brothers and sisters, HEY NOW! HEY! Can I have your attention.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Judy’s sister over at the side of the room speaking with some black women. I walked over to her and asked if she could explain what was going on. All she said was, “Be quiet, Bobby is going to rap.”

“Brothers and sisters, we are at a turning point. As you know, our good brother, Huey P. Newton, was framed by the pigs a month ago and is now in jail.”

There were murmurs of assent from all corners of the room as people turned their attention to the speaker.

“Me and the brothers,” he gestured to the other three men, “the council of the Party, we have been talking and thinking. We have to find a way to free Huey. We must make our voices heard! We will have justice!”

The crowd was warming up. I heard voices scattered throughout the room call out, “Yes! Say it, brother! Amen, brother!”

“Our brother Huey was arrested on false charges that he shot and killed a police officer. We all know brother Huey would not do such a thing. That would go against everything he believes in.”

“That’s right.”

“Well the time has come to act and we have a plan.”

“Tell it, brother.”

“We party leaders have been meeting during the last few weeks with our allies on the college campuses and in the national peace movement. They have agreed to join in our cause to Free Huey.”

“Free Huey! Free Huey! All power to the People!”

I stood there in shock. Holy shit! These guys were the Black Panthers. It all made sense. Judy’s sister worked for a civil rights organization. Her friends, all of whom were probably civil rights or peace activists, invited her to this party where an alliance was in the process of being forged between the Panthers and the New Left.

What little I knew about the Black Panthers I heard from Walter Cronkite on the evening news. Throughout the 1960s a number of cities across the country experienced race riots, often immediately after incidents of police brutality. One such riot occurred in late September 1966 in the Hunter’s Point neighborhood of San Francisco following the police shooting of Matthew Johnson, an unarmed young black man.

Huey Newton and Bobbie Seale were first hand witnesses to this riot. They saw the anger of young people in the black community as a force that could be organized for change. They were dissatisfied with the failure of civil rights organizations to directly challenge police brutality. Toward the end of 1966 they began to conduct armed patrols on the streets of Oakland. When confronted by the police, they cited California law that permitted carrying a loaded rifle or shotgun as long as it was publicly displayed and not pointed at any one.

Newton and Seale called their organization the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.They soon became the most visible element of the Black Power movement that was gaining strength in black communities across the nation.

The national media was fascinated by the image of young black men holding rifles in an urban streetscape. White Middle America was terrified. The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover declared the Black Panthers to be "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." The FBI immediately instituted a program of surveillance, infiltration and police harassment designed to incriminate the Panther leadership and drain the organization of resources. Bobby Seale knew about the FBI’s plan. He had concluded that the arrest of Huey Newton was proof that the FBI would stop at nothing to destroy the Panthers.

As I listened to him talk, I began to feel a strong admiration for what Bobby Seale was trying to do. His passion for justice was so strong. His vision of a brighter future for his community was amazing. His commitment to directly and personally confronting police brutality totally blew me away. It was impossible for me to reconcile my own commitment to non-violence with the Panther’s belief that violent revolution may be necessary to achieve justice for the black community. Even so, it was a revelation for this country boy just to be in the same room with Bobby Seale.

Bobby Seale was right, I think, about the need to forge an alliance with the wider community of left-leaning activists. As it turned out the “Free Huey” campaign did have wide appeal for both peace activists and other black power organizations. The Peace and Freedom Party and its Presidential candidate, Dick Gregory, supported the Free Huey campaign as it promoted antiwar and antiracist politics. The overall result was a growing awareness among those on the left of the structural connection between the causes of the Vietnam War and the roots of racism in America.

Despite everyone’s efforts on his behalf, Huey Newton was convicted of murdering the police officer and was sentenced to prison. He was released three years later when his conviction was reversed on appeal.

The Free Huey campaign resulted in Bobby Seale being invited to join the organizers of the huge anti-war demonstration during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. All the top organizers, including Seale, were quickly arrested and charged with inciting a riot. Seale was convicted of multiple counts of contempt of court because he would not sit quietly during the obviously sham court proceedings. He was sentenced to four years in prison. He was released years later after his conviction was reversed on appeal.

By the time Bobby Seale and Huey Newton got out of jail the Black Panther Party had lost its momentum. J. Edgar Hoover’s plan had worked. By depriving the Black Panthers of their two strongest leaders and diverting cash and energy to their defense, the FBI caused them to collapse.

Although the Black Panthers did not create a sustained national black power movement, it did succeed in drawing a great deal of public attention to issues of race and justice. As I stood in Oakland that night listening to Bobby Seale, I understood the irrational power of hope for the first time. All idealism is fueled by hope. If Bobby Seale and the Panthers could hope for justice, I could hope for justice.

We left the Christmas party in the early morning hours. It was getting light by the time we sat in Judy’s sister’s kitchen eating breakfast. I managed a few hours of fitful sleep then headed to the airport, said a tearful last goodbye to Judy and to caught the red-eye back to the east coast.

Almost as soon as the plane was airborne I fell asleep. I was floating free. I felt so confident. I dreamed of a revolution of peace and justice that would transform America. I vowed to somehow find a way to live that dream.

Power to the people! Right on!