I found this while rumaging through different websites...
(Written for New York Newsday in 1995)
THE BLACK PANTHERS:
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Terry Bisson
When Katherine Ann Power surrendered last month after almost twenty five years underground, a generation of sixties activists watched in sympathetic fascination. But some watched from behind bars. The African-American radicals of the sixties, exemplified by the Black Panthers, were motivated by the same high ideals, victim to the same youthful errors, and subject to the same excesses as the white radicals. The difference is that many have spent the intervening decades not underground, not on probation, but in prison; and this is a difference that marks, with black and white precision, the line between justice and racism.
In New York State there are at least eight former Black Panthers still in jail, some of them since the early 1970s, for the same sort of politically-motivated acts for which Power was hunted. They are among twenty-five to thirty Panthers imprisoned nationwide. Some were members of the original "Panther 21," targets of police entrapment. Some were with the Black Liberation Army, formed after the Panthers were decimated by the FBI's covert anti-Black leadership program (COINTELPRO). Some, like California's Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt or New York's Dhoruba Bin Wahad (whose conviction was overturned in 1991 after nineteen years in prison), were framed; others were convicted on tainted evidence; all were sentenced far too harshly.
Robert "Seth" Hayes has been in jail the longest, since 1971. Teddy "Jah" Heath has been in jail since 1973 for a kidnapping in which no one was injured. Herman Bell, Albert "Nuh" Washington and Anthony Bottoms (the "New York Three") are still in prison even though a federal judge recently ruled that testimony convicting them of killing a policeman was perjured. Abdul Majid and Bashir Hameed, convicted of killing a policeman in 1981 after two mistrials, are now appealling their third trial in which the prosecution used eighty percent of its challenges to exclude Black jurors. Most of these men, who have already been in prison for decades, will not be eligible for parole until long after Katherine Ann Power has returned to freedom.
It's not fair. The Panthers are not America's only political prisoners; there are scores of American Indians, MOVE militants, Puerto Rican Independentistas and white radicals serving draconian sentences for what can only be deemed "political" crimes. But I single out the Panthers because they have been in jail the longest; because every veteran of the sixties, black and white, was inspired by the courage and commitment of these politicized ghetto youth; and because their treatment is so transparently, so cruelly, so shamefully vengeful.
The Panthers are still being punished for the violence of a decade of struggle in which crimes were committed on both sides. Policemen were killed, it is true (though far more Panthers were killed by police). But it is no secret that violence and criminality by police was a desperate issue in the Black community, then as now. The Mollen Commission itself admits it has revealed nothing new. Rodney King was not the first African-American man beaten unmercifully by police; he was only the first on prime-time TV. And J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO program was only the most notorious of many illegal government operations aimed at preventing the rise of a "Black Messiah."
Whatever our position today on these issues, it dishonors no one to recognize that the Panthers were not criminals out for personal gain. The injustices they struggled against and the contribution they made are recognized by the entire Black community. It is time for the US government to show the same capacity for mercy that even the bitterest of enemies can, on occasion, exhibit. It is ironic that at the very time when Israel was releasing its longest held political prisoner, Salim Zerai, after twenty-three years, former Black Panther Sundiata Acoli, captured with Assata Shakur in 1973, was turned down for parole after twenty years in prison.
Regardless of the merits of each individual case, what these former Black Panthers all have in common is that they were willing to take a stand and even take up arms to defend what they perceived as a community under seige. We don't have to agree with their actions to honor their commitment, to recognize that the injustices they fought against were real (and still prevail today), and to admit that they deserve at least the grudging portion of mercy that was extended to Katherine Ann Power. The wounds of the sixties cannot begin to be healed until the militants of the sixties are given justice.
Black as well as white. It's only fair.
THE BLACK PANTHERS:
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Terry Bisson
When Katherine Ann Power surrendered last month after almost twenty five years underground, a generation of sixties activists watched in sympathetic fascination. But some watched from behind bars. The African-American radicals of the sixties, exemplified by the Black Panthers, were motivated by the same high ideals, victim to the same youthful errors, and subject to the same excesses as the white radicals. The difference is that many have spent the intervening decades not underground, not on probation, but in prison; and this is a difference that marks, with black and white precision, the line between justice and racism.
In New York State there are at least eight former Black Panthers still in jail, some of them since the early 1970s, for the same sort of politically-motivated acts for which Power was hunted. They are among twenty-five to thirty Panthers imprisoned nationwide. Some were members of the original "Panther 21," targets of police entrapment. Some were with the Black Liberation Army, formed after the Panthers were decimated by the FBI's covert anti-Black leadership program (COINTELPRO). Some, like California's Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt or New York's Dhoruba Bin Wahad (whose conviction was overturned in 1991 after nineteen years in prison), were framed; others were convicted on tainted evidence; all were sentenced far too harshly.
Robert "Seth" Hayes has been in jail the longest, since 1971. Teddy "Jah" Heath has been in jail since 1973 for a kidnapping in which no one was injured. Herman Bell, Albert "Nuh" Washington and Anthony Bottoms (the "New York Three") are still in prison even though a federal judge recently ruled that testimony convicting them of killing a policeman was perjured. Abdul Majid and Bashir Hameed, convicted of killing a policeman in 1981 after two mistrials, are now appealling their third trial in which the prosecution used eighty percent of its challenges to exclude Black jurors. Most of these men, who have already been in prison for decades, will not be eligible for parole until long after Katherine Ann Power has returned to freedom.
It's not fair. The Panthers are not America's only political prisoners; there are scores of American Indians, MOVE militants, Puerto Rican Independentistas and white radicals serving draconian sentences for what can only be deemed "political" crimes. But I single out the Panthers because they have been in jail the longest; because every veteran of the sixties, black and white, was inspired by the courage and commitment of these politicized ghetto youth; and because their treatment is so transparently, so cruelly, so shamefully vengeful.
The Panthers are still being punished for the violence of a decade of struggle in which crimes were committed on both sides. Policemen were killed, it is true (though far more Panthers were killed by police). But it is no secret that violence and criminality by police was a desperate issue in the Black community, then as now. The Mollen Commission itself admits it has revealed nothing new. Rodney King was not the first African-American man beaten unmercifully by police; he was only the first on prime-time TV. And J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO program was only the most notorious of many illegal government operations aimed at preventing the rise of a "Black Messiah."
Whatever our position today on these issues, it dishonors no one to recognize that the Panthers were not criminals out for personal gain. The injustices they struggled against and the contribution they made are recognized by the entire Black community. It is time for the US government to show the same capacity for mercy that even the bitterest of enemies can, on occasion, exhibit. It is ironic that at the very time when Israel was releasing its longest held political prisoner, Salim Zerai, after twenty-three years, former Black Panther Sundiata Acoli, captured with Assata Shakur in 1973, was turned down for parole after twenty years in prison.
Regardless of the merits of each individual case, what these former Black Panthers all have in common is that they were willing to take a stand and even take up arms to defend what they perceived as a community under seige. We don't have to agree with their actions to honor their commitment, to recognize that the injustices they fought against were real (and still prevail today), and to admit that they deserve at least the grudging portion of mercy that was extended to Katherine Ann Power. The wounds of the sixties cannot begin to be healed until the militants of the sixties are given justice.
Black as well as white. It's only fair.