LIFE
FORCE
The magazine of the photo-essay
June 2017 back issue
“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!”
Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film & documentary maker
by Stephen Shames
The Black Panther Party was one of the most influential responses to racism and
inequality in American history. The Panthers advocated armed self-defense to counter
police brutality, and initiated a program of patrolling the police with guns and law books.
Their enduring legacy is their programs, like Free Breakfast for Children, which helped
to inspire a national movement of community organizing for economic independence,
education, nutrition, and health care. Seale believed that “no kid should be running
around hungry in school,” a simple credo that lead FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to call
the breakfast program, “the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP
and destroy what it stands for.”
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July 28, 1968 - Oakland, California, USA: "Panthers on Parade" Panthers line up at a Free Huey rally in DeFremery
Park, in west Oakland’s ghetto. Light skinned man is Gregory Harrison. His brother, Oleander, went to Sacramento with
Bobby Seale.
1968 - Oakland, California, USA: Panthers stand just off stage at a Free Huey rally in DeFremery Park. Cle Brooks
(arms folded). Cle was a San Francisco Panther who went to San Quentin Prison and started the San Quentin chapter
of the BPP.
July 28, 1968 - Oakland, California, USA: Black Panther Chairman and co-founder Bobby Seale speaks at a Free Huey
rally in Defermery Park (named by the Panthers Bobby Hutton Park) in West Oakland. Left of Seale is Bill Brent, who
later went to Cuba. Right is Wilford Holiday, known as Captain Crutch.
July 28, 1968 - Oakland, California, USA: Kathleen Cleaver, communications secretary and the first female member of
the Party’s decision-making Central Committee, talks with Black Panthers from Los Angeles who came to the Free
Huey rally in DeFremery Park (named by the Panthers Bobby Hutton Park) in West Oakland.
September 29, 1968 - Oakland, California, USA: Black Panther Monster of Information Eldridge Cleave sits inside the
Panther National headquarters at Grove and 45th Street after it was shot up in the middle of the night by two Oakland
policemen following a not guilty verdict for Huey Newton in his first degree murder trial.
November, 1970 - Chicago, Illinois, USA: Free Breakfast Program. Panther Jerry Dunigan, known as "Odinka", talks to
kids while they eat breakfast on Chicago’s south side.
1972 - Palo Alto, California, USA: Two women with bags of food at
the People's Free Food Program, one of the Panther's survival
programs.
1971 - Oakland, California, USA: Black Panther children in a classroom at the Intercommunal Youth Institute, the Black
Panther school.
1971 - Oakland, California, USA: Black Panther Gloria Abernethy selling papers at the Mayfair supermarket boycott.
Tamara Lacey is in the background holding a poster. Today Gloria works for the state of California Tamara is a real
estate agent.
1971 - Oakland, California, USA: The Lumpen, the Panthers’ singing group, performs at the boycott of Bill’s Liquors.
Clark Bailey, known as Santa Rita, is dancing. Michael Torrence (front) and James Mott (back) are drumming. Torrence,
who went on to sing back up for Marvin Gaye, now runs an anger management and pregnancy program in south
central Los Angeles.
August 28, 1971 - Oakland, California, USA: Black Panthers carry George Jackson's coffin into St. Augustine’s Church
for his funeral service as a huge crowd watches.
August, 1970 - Berkeley, California, USA: Black Panther Minister
of Defense and co-founder Huey Newton listens to Bob Dylan’s
record Highway 61 in his house shortly after his release from
prison. Huey got used to being cold in prison. He feels too hot
inside the house, so he takes off his shirt.
February, 1970 - San Francisco, California, USA: Children at a Free Huey, Free Bobby rally in front of the Federal
Building.
May 1, 1970 - New Haven, Connecticut, USA: Boy gives raised fist
salute as he and a friend sit on a statue in front of the New Haven
County Courthouse during a demonstration of 15,000 people
during the Bobby Seale / Ericka Huggins trial. Bobby Seale,
Chairman of the Black Panther Party is on trial along with Ericka
Huggins for murder. Both are acquitted.
1973 - Oakland, California, USA: Black Panther Chairman Bobby Seale campaigns for Mayor of Oakland on a city bus.
Seale ran for Mayor of Oakland, California in 1973 He received the second-most votes in a field of nine candidates but
ultimately lost in a run-off with incumbent Mayor John Reading. The Black Panther Party's1972 voter registration drive
put several thousand new voters on the books. That registration drive helped Lionel Wilson became the first Black
mayor of Oakland. in 1977
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