A Panther is a Black Cat: An Account of the Early Years of The Black Panther Party - Its Origins, Its Goals, and Its Struggle for Survival [Paperback]

Reginald Major (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2007

An insider’s look at the formative years of the Black Panther Party, this raw, sympathetic portrayal is as fresh today as when first published in 1971. Reginald Major knew and worked with leaders of the Party prior to its organization, and from this intimate vantage point he captured events as the Panthers set the example for black resistance across the country. This edition includes a new introduction by the author.

Product Details

• Paperback: 310 pages
• Publisher: Black Classic Press (January 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574780379
• ISBN-13: 978-1574780376
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,073,658 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars IN THE TIMES OF THE LIBERATION STRUGGLE, February 16, 2007

By 

Alfred Johnson (boston, ma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Panther is a Black Cat: An Account of the Early Years of The Black Panther Party - Its Origins, Its Goals, and Its Struggle for Survival (Paperback)

FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Recently I posted on my blog an article passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee protesting the recent arrest of some former Black Panthers for crimes allegedly committed in the early 1970's. Apparently, when the government gets you in its sights you are there forever, especially if you are black. That article got me to thinking back to the days when we of the white left were head over heels in love with the Black Panthers as the epitome of revolutionary manhood (and it was mainly men) and of revolutionary struggle. Well, as we are all painfully aware, those days are long gone although the goals fought for in those days are still desperately in need of completion. Thus, some thoughts about the ups and downs of the Black Panther experience, the most militant and subjectively revolutionary part of the black liberation movement of the 1960's, and its role in the history of black liberation is in order.

It is extremely improbable that the phenomenal rise of the Black Panthers in California, and later elsewhere, would have occurred had it not been for the tidal wave of the black civil rights struggle in the South in the early 1960' s and the various ghetto uprisings in the mid-1960's. The victories achieved in the civil rights struggle, limited as they were, taught masses of blacks how to organize around their own interests. That those victories were limited became apparent with the hardheaded and hard-learned experience that those problems were only the tip of the iceberg for the black community as the struggle moved North and West. This contradiction played itself internally in the black liberation movement and eventually caused a profound political collision between the liberal integrationist, pacific wing epitomized by Martin Luther King and the separatist, nationalist, self-defense oriented Malcolm X wing , of which the Panthers were the heirs. A shorthand way of putting this is the black liberation variant of the age-old tension between revolutionary and reformist strategies for social change. The Black Panthers throughout their rise and fall never did successfully overcome that tension, to the detriment of militant leftists, black and white.

As any photograph taken of the Panthers from the period would demonstrate the Panthers and particularly the central leadership, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Elridge Cleaver among others were not adverse to little provocative demonstrations or shock-value publicity. The FBI, however, early on had other plans for them and they were not pretty. If J. Edgar Hoover saw the placid Martin Luther King-led branch of the civil rights movement as some kind of communist conspiracy then he turned apoplectic at the thought of armed black men asserting their right to bear arms. Since early slavery times that possibility had always been the fear of whites and the response was no different this time. Over a very short period the Hoover-orchestrated federal and state drive against the Panthers left most of the key leaders and cadre dead, in jail, on bail or in hiding, This was not the first time a perceived leftist threat had been dealt with by the government in this way. One can think of the International Workers of the World (Wobblies) in the World War I period, the Communist and Anarchist `red scare' raids and deportations after that war and more recently the anticommunist witch hunts of the 1950's. With this difference, however, in the case of the Panthers there was a concerted effort to kill off every one they could get their hands on.

The repression of the Panthers became so intense that in many ways they became a de facto legal defense organization. That was quite a difference from the wild, revolutionary black nationalist days when they believed that they could go it alone on the streets with a cadre of black street militants in an American version of a `third world' guerilla warfare- driven national liberation front. Their nationalism initially alienated them from the black community (except, perhaps in their home base of Oakland, California) as until very late the ordinary black worker could not relate to the Panther political line despite the fact that even then the East Bay and other locales where the Panthers had influence were solidly working class areas. In short, they were looking in the streets not in the factories to organize the revolution.

The state repression also caused a shift in strategy as a matter of self-defense. However, the price the Panthers would pay for this was a capitulation to Democratic Party reformism through the vehicle of the Communist Party's legal defense organizations, which they latched onto out of desperation. I have personal experience of this change. A fair number of blacks I had known from various earlier political struggles drifted into the Panther revolutionary nationalist orbit in revulsion against Martin Luther King's non-violent strategy for social change, the incessant racism of American society and the barely hidden paternalism of the white liberal establishment and a fair part of the left. For a period in the late 1960's it was almost impossible for white radicals and revolutionaries to talk or to socialize with many Panthers, especially the rank and file. On more than one occasion I was either snubbed by or threatened by Panthers for attempting to argue for an integrated black and white alliance around a common program to fight the beast of American imperialism. Then in the very early seventies all of a sudden I was invited to various Panther support meetings and social affairs. Obviously the line had changed (through the concept of the united front against fascism) and now I was a comrade again.

Even a cursory glance at the current American class structure points out that blacks (and more recently Hispanics) are heavily concentrated in the working class so that in order to be successful the struggle for socialism will have to deal with the fact that blacks will be a central component in the leadership of, and the struggle for, those goals. This is where the sad lessons of the demise of the Panthers between the rock of black nationalism and the hard place of democratic reformist politics is especially important. Looking back at the history of the 1960's black liberation struggle one can see little turning points where if hard communists had had enough forces they could have shifted the axis of the struggle way from black nationalism and democratic reformism. A working class program to break from the Democratic Party and struggle independently for a workers party could have gained a cadre. Do you not think that such a program would have not gotten a hearing from the landless rural workers in the South and the black industrial proletariat of the North and West? That, dear readers, is the ultimate tragedy of the demise of the Black Panthers. Enough said.