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>ORIGINAL BLACK PANTHERS |
"The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution."
-Huey Newton |
The Deacons for Defense
(1964, Jonesboro, Louisiana) |
A group of African American men in Jonesboro, Louisiana led by Earnest "Chilly Willy" Thomas and Frederick Douglas Kirkpatrick founded the group in November of 1964 to protect civil rights workers against the violence of the Ku Klux Klan. Most of them were war veterans with combat experience from the Korean War and World War II. The Jonesboro chapter later organized a Deacons chapter in Bogalusa, Louisiana led by Charles Sims, A.Z. Young and Robert Hicks. The Jonesboro chapter initiated a regional organizing campaign and eventually formed 21 chapters in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The militant Deacons confrontation with the Klan in Bogalusa was instrumental in forcing the federal government to invervene on behalf of the black community and enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act and neutralize the Klan.
The tactics of the Deacons attracted the attention and concern of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which commenced an investigation of the group. However, with the advent of the militant Black Power Movement, the involvement of the Deacons in the civil rights movement declined, with the presence of the Deacons all but vanishing by 1968.
The work of the Deacons is the subject of a 2003 Television movie, Deacons for Defense. |
Lowndes County Freedom Organization - Black Panther Party
(1965, Lowndes County, Alabama) |
The Black Panther Party was created in Lowndes County Alabama in 1965. It was the result of the voter registration drive launched by the Student Non-Violen t Coordinating Committee (SNCC), later changed to Student National Coordinating Committee. This effort was spearheaded by Kwame Ture (then known as Stokely Carmichael). It is important to note that Lowndes Co. was 97+% African --- but totally controlled by the European 2+ percent. In Alabama as in many parts of this country, our people were not allowed to register and therefore had no vote. The state of Alabama was dominated by the Alabama Democratic Party who symbol was the "White Cock" a white rooster. This symbol represented white supremacy.
SNCC's plan was simple: get enough people to vote so blacks might control the local government and redirect services to black residents -- 80 percent of whom lived below the poverty line. Carmichael and others organized registration drives, demonstrations, and political education classes in support of the black residents.
In Alabama there was a state law that said that in any given county a prerequisite number of county residents could come together and form their own political organization for that county. This meant they could run their own candidates, register voters and what have you. The SNCC workers took this law, and organized a county convention in Lowndes.
Out of that convention an organization called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) was created. The LCFO subsequently nominated and selected candidates to run for the county offices: assessor, sheriff and so on. Now SNCC and LCFO were confronted with the problem of mass illiteracy among our people in the area...so they came up with the idea that since so many could not read they need an icon or picture that they could readily identify as their organization. The symbol of the Black Panther was selected because of the color, because of the panther's skills as a fighting cat, and because the image was likely to motivate people.
The Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama was also called the Black Panther Party because it used the symbol to represent the organization as was required by state electoral law. Although there was no formal organizational relationship between that Black Panther Party and the subsequent Black Panther Party for Self Defense organized in Oakland, California, several figures - including SNCC field organizer Stokely Carmichael - served to bridge these two key organizations in the Black power movement. In a speech delivered at the 1966 S.D.S.-sponsored "Black Power and Change" conference at U.C. Berkeley, he said:
"In Lowndes County, we developed something called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. It is a political party. The Alabama law says that if you have a Party you must have an emblem. We chose for the emblem a black panther, a beautiful black animal which symbolizes the strength and dignity of black people, an animal that never strikes back until he's back so far into the wall, he's got nothing to do but spring out. Yeah. And when he springs he does not stop.
Now there is a Party in Alabama called the Alabama Democratic Party. It is all white. It has as its emblem a white rooster and the words "white supremacy" for the write. Now the gentlemen of the Press, because they're advertisers, and because most of them are white, and because they're produced by that white institution, never called the Lowndes Country Freedom Organization by its name, but rather they call it the Black Panther Party. Our question is, Why don't they call the Alabama Democratic Party the "White Cock Party"? (It's fair to us.....) It is clear to me that that just points out America's problem with sex and color, not our problem, not our problem. And it is now white America that is going to deal with sex and color."
The LCFO registration was an immediate success with the African population. Naturally the enemy hated it and did all they could to destroy the LCFO They evicted sharecroppers, tenant farmers, attempted to foreclose people illegally, and threatened to kill any African who registered. In response to these circumstances the leadership of LCFO instructed its members and supporters to arm themselves, but not to precipitate any violence. This was a strategy necessitated strictly for SELF-DEFENSE. To summarize the people carried a piece for protection, registered and then returned to their place of residence. SNCC, in June of the next year, in Jackson MS, made the famous call for Black Power. A few months later SNCC issued a paper explaining their call for Black Power. Among the things they called for in the Black Power position paper was the establishment of Black Panther Parties throughout our communities across the USA.
Now among the many courageous African student volunteers working with SN CC in the original Lowndes Co. project was Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. They were so impressed with the Lowndes Co. experience that they later began to organize the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland. They advocated that Africans should carry a gun and a legal textbook to defend our Constitutional rights. Key SNCC leaders were invited to serve in select positions. For example Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) was asked to be the Prime Minister of the Party, and others such as Brother H. Rap Brown (now known as Imam Jamil Al-Amin Abdullah and currently a political prisoner) were drafted. |
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