Forum/Discussions

Arguably, the historiography of the Black Panther Movement (BPM) has reached its “golden age;” but the story it tells, writes, and films, especially the history of the struggle to build the Black Panther Movement in Chicago, is encumbered with a host of myths, errors and omissions, minimizations and exaggerations, half-truths and outright lies.

The true history of this struggle, especially from June 1964 to July 1969, is contested space. Bob Brown, director of Pan-African Roots and a member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party ^(GC) has entered this contested space, this war about history.

The Black Panther Academic-Entertainment Complex is a corrupt, multi-billion-dollar industry. You will perhaps agree that Judas and the Black Messiah, a Participant Media, Bron Creative, Warner Brothers, HBO and AMC theaters film, despite its reviews and awards, is an insult to historical memory and truth, another COINTELPRO and cointelpro-like operation against the Black Panther, Black Power, and Pan-African Movements. Spike Lee’s, Marvel Comics and Walt Disney’s movies are worse. The truth will be told, written, and filmed!

On 26 February 2020, Bob Brown, delivered a presentation at the International Institute for Social Studies at the University of Rotterdam titled “Black Power and the Politics of Liberation, in Comparative Perspective.” A video of this presentation was edited and uploaded to YouTube on 25 February 2022. You can view it by clicking the above link to the website of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party ^(GC).

Four years earlier, on 28 September 2016, Brown delivered a presentation at Morehouse College in Atlanta titled “Crown Forum After Dark: 50th Anniversary of the Black Panther Party Movement.” Kathleen Cleaver and Bobby Seale also made presentations at this event. A video of this presentation was uploaded to YouTube on 3 October 2016. Click the link above.

These presentations, and dozens of others about the Black Panther Movement that Brown has delivered across the world, call for the creation of a militant and mass movement, on-campus, and off-campus, to revise and correctly tell, write and film the history of the struggle to build the Black Panther Movement and a host of Black Panther Parties/Litters worldwide.

Brown’s historical perspective offers a timeline and alternative narrative on the BPM, several facts that are not widely known, and an avalanche of recently disclosed records on the COINTELRPO and cointelpro-like operations, of the right and the left, which were waged to prevent its rise. Some these facts include.

• In June 1964, the organization of a litter of independent, all-African (Black) Freedom Organizations in 650 Black Belt counties across the South, from Virginia to Texas, was proposed by Jim Forman, Bob Moses, and Jack Minnis in a proposal they submitted to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) calling for a Black Summer Project (1965). This south-wide Project, with northern support, would have been historic and precedent setting. It was sabotaged by the Democratic Party, internal forces within SNCC, and other forces, of the right and the left.
• The SNCC staff meeting in February 1965 approved a compromise Black Belt Summer 1965 Project. In March and April 1965, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and 30 SNCC field staff went to Alabama to help organize a voter registration drive and help build Freedom Organizations in 20 to 30 Black Belt counties in Alabama. This Project was also sabotaged. The three counties were Freedom Organizations were actually built, under the logo of the black panther, including Lowndes County, were the first of six litters of independent Black Panther Parties worldwide.
• The first Black Panther Party in Chicago, part of the second litter of BPPs nationwide, was founded in June 1966 by Monroe Sharpe, the then director of the Chicago Office of SNCC and Yaree Ameer, a student at Forestville High School and leader of the East Side Disciple Gang. This first BPP in Chicago was destroyed by the Democratic Party and police, and by Mayor Richard J. Daley and Alderman Claude Holloman (4th Ward) by December 1966. This BPP’s fatal mistake was in not maintaining a fire wall between its political operations and the criminality of its youth gang members, a problem common to BPP chapters across the United States.
• There were several additional attempts to build BPPs in Chicago in 1967, during Joyce Brown’s leadership. She replaced Monroe Sharpe. Each attempt was independent of and often in conflict with the others. They all had ties, directly or indirectly, in collaboration or competition with Ture and other SNCC cadre.
• On 28 August 1966, Ture publicly announced the formation of the first Black Panther Party of New York, with Muhammad Ahmad as its chairman. It was co-founded by Queen Mother Moore in June 1966. Ahmad was a Black Maoist, Field Marshall of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM).
• By 22 September 1966, RAM and SNCC, collectively and independently, had built a network of affiliated BPP chapters in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Seattle, San-Francisco, and other cities. They were the third litter of BPPs. Most of them were destroyed by December 1966, and the rest were liquidated by 3 March 1967.
• Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton wrote a Ten-Point Program on 15 October 1966. It was borrowed from the Nation of Islam’s What We Want, What We Believe Program. The Ten-Point Program called for the creation of an independent, all Black political party. The BPP in Oakland did not however, at that dialectical moment, according to Seale, have a name. They adopted the name Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the panther logo later, in November or December 1966, according to Ture and the FBI. It became the fourth, not the first or sole litter of the BPM.
• On June 29, 1967, Ture was appointed Honorary Field Marshall of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense by Huey P. Newton. Cleaver, Newton, and Seale “seized the time” to capture and coopt Ture on the eve of his World Tour. Ture’s responsibility was to recruit cadre and build chapters of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, and the larger Black Panther Movement, whenever and wherever he could in the world.
• In July 1967, Ture helped midwife the Black Panther Party of London, an independent party that was founded by Obi Egbuna, Sr. Ture was banned from the United Kingdom and the BPP was crushed throughout the British Empire. This was part of the fifth of BPPs.
• In August 1967, during his World Tour, Kwame Ture attended the 8th Congress of the Democratic Party of Guinea. Madame Shirley Graham DuBois introduced him to Osagefyo Kwame Nkrumah, President Sekou Toure, Miriam Makeba, and others. Makeba introduced Ture to the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (South Africa). He agreed to move to Guinea to study and work under Nkrumah and Toure.
• Ture studied The Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, and he joined and agreed to help build the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) whenever and wherever he could throughout the United States and the African Diaspora. In the meantime, he continued o helped build the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and to help Free Huey!

If history had played out differently and kindlier, the Black Panther Parties and the Black Liberation Army would have been the United States, British, and other chapters of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and of All-African People’s Revolutionary Army, as Nkrumah had called for. Ture continued to help build the A-APRP and spread Nrumahism-Toureism, full-time, for low pay and no pay, for the next 3 decades.

• In September 1967, Bob Brown was appointed the acting director of the Midwest Office of SNCC by Joyce Brown (no relationship) in the wake of a student rebellion at Forestville High School. Yaree Ameer, and eleven other students, members of the Chicago Friends of SNCC and of the East Side Disciple Gang, had been arrested. Brown’s first assignment in Chicago SNCC was to help raise their bail and find attorneys. That was one of the easiest assignments of Brown’s life.

The student and anti-draft movements were in the streets, and urban rebellions and guerrilla warfare were raging in every corner of the world, including Chicago. Mayor Daley had just been re-elected, and was conducting a mass arrest campaign against youth, students, and gangs. Jorja English-Palmer had founded and led a United Bail and Legal Defense Fund, and Kermit Coleman, founder of the Ghetto Project of the Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU was its general counsel. Brown was 19-years old, the new director of Midwest SNCC, and secretary of the Bail Bond Fund. English-Palmer and Coleman got Ameer and his posse out of jail and won their case. Kenneth Benson and the CORE youth were also bailed out and won.

• On 28 October 1967, Huey P. Newton was wounded during a shoot-out with the police in Oakland and arrested. Ethel Minor, the then National Communications Secretary of SNCC, was the first to send a message of solidarity and a pledge to help build support worldwide. Bob Avakian, and the Peace and Freedom Party, were the second to send a message and a pledge of worldwide support. Avakian was one of the first Maoists in the United States.
• In November 1967, Kwame Ture, David and Elizabeth Sibeko, and PAC (Azania/South Africa) guerrillas in Tanzania organized the first international protest at the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam demanding Newton’s release. Sibeko was a leader of the Maoist Movement in Azania.
• Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, Bobby Seale and David Hillard had organized The Movement to Free Huey. They recruited Charles Gary to serve as Huey’s attorney and helped lay the foundation for a worldwide Free Huey Campaign. William Patterson and Charlene Mitchell, leaders of the Communist Party USA, also helped build the Free Huey Campaign into a worldwide movement.
• On 17 December 1967, Ture returned to the United States from his 90-Day World Tour. In January, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale invited Ture, Jamil al-Amin (also known as H. Rap Brown) and Jim Foreman of SNCC to be keynote speakers at the Free Huey Rallies in Oakland and Los Angeles on 17-18 February 1968.
• A merger between SNCC and the BPP for Self-Defense was falsely and opportunistically claimed. Ture was drafted to serve as Honorary Prime Minister of the Party. His primary assignment again was to recruit cadre and build chapters across the United States. Ture was in the process of moving to live in Guinea at the time. Al-Amin was drafted to serve as Minister of Justice. Foreman was drafted to serve as Minister of Education. Sekou “Chico” Neblett was drafted to replace Ture as Field Marshall for the Eastern Region.
• At that dialectical moment in history, there were only two chapters of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, and less than one hundred members. The Friends of SNCC group, led by Jimmy Garrett, Director of West Coast SNCC and co-founder of the 1^st Black Studies program in the US; and the Dixon Brothers of Seattle SNCC became the third chapter of the BPP for Self-Defense, the fourth litter of the larger Black Panther Movement.

Over the next 90 to 120 days, Kwame Ture launched a drive to recruit key SNCC cadre to help build BPP chapters across the United States, and worldwide support for the Free Huey Movement. We mention some of the key SNCC cadre here: Bill “Winky” Hall, David Brothers, Atim and Babu in New York and New Jersey; Seku “Chico” and Renee Neblett in Boston; Ethel Minor, Freddie Green-Biddle, Jan Bailey, Koko Hughes-Farrow, Steve Farrow, Helen Colbert-Woodruff, Evelyn and Paul Monroe in Baltimore-DC; Frank Hughes in Richmond; Cleve Sellers in Columbia, SC and Greensboro, NC; and Mukassa “Willie” Ricks in Atlanta and other areas of the South. These key cadre became members of the 1^st Central Committee of the A-APRP in the US, when it was announced in 1972. Their names have been whited out of Panther history. We black them back in.

• On 16 March 1968, Miriam Makeba announced her engagement to Kwame Ture. All hell broke loose. She and he were banned from the Bahamas by President Lyndon Pindling on 18 March 1968. She traveled to Chicago the next day, to perform at Mr. Kelly’s, the Regal Theater, and a number of engagements between 19-29 March 1968. Ture traveled to Chicago with her. He, Brown, and others struggled tirelessly to help build another litter of BPPs in Chicago.
• On 25 March 1968, 700 people crowded the Afro-Arts Theater in Chicago to hear Kwame Ture speak, and to demand the release of Jamil Al-amin, also known as H. Rap Brown. Unfortunately, we are still demanding al-Amin’s release today. A who’s who of organizers and cultural artists shared the platform.
• Between 25-28 March 1968, the exact date we are searching for, Brown introduced Bobby Rush and Fred Hampton to Ture at a NAACP Youth Rally in Maywood which was organized to raise funds and support for one of Hampton’s legal appeals. The second litter of the BPP in Chicago, not including several aborted attempts, was founded. Brown convinced Tommy Carter of South Suburban SNCC, Bob Rush of SNCC, Claudell Kirk of the Deacons for Defense and Justice to join. Fred Hampton, according to Kwame Ture, was enthusiastic about joining, and actually joined a couple of weeks later. Tommy Carter, Kirk and Sekou Neblett also agreed to help organize throughout the State of Illinois from Robbins, Harvey, and Peoria, to Urbana-Champaign, Carbondale, and East St. Louis.
• On 4 April 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered by the US Government. Some 48 hours later, 10,500 police, 6,750 National Guardsmen and 5,000 soldiers from the 1st Armory and the 5^th Infantry division had been “called to duty” in Chicago. There was $10 million in damages, 125 fires, and 210 buildings damaged or destroyed. At least eleven people died, five hundred injured with forty-eight wounded by police gunfire, and ninety policemen injured. More than 2,150 people were arrested, and Kermit Coleman and the ACLU Ghetto Project, and Jorja English-Palmer and the United Bail Fund were working overtime. Doug Andrews of the Garfield Organization and Westside ACT, and Fats Crawford of the Deacons for Defense and Justice and the Negro Rifleman’s association were arrested. Ture and Brown agreed to help Jorja English-Palmer to raise their bail and monies for their legal fees.

Brown and Rush were in the streets, observing the rebellion, helping where we could, and avoiding the dozens of FBI, military and police who were watching us, and waiting for us to make a mistake. Rush admits that he was on active duty with the US Army while in SNCC for two years and during the King rebellion. He had a national security clearance and was assigned to the Nike Missile site in Chicago. He has repeatedly claimed that he went AWOL for one week during the rebellion, went back to base and was honorably discharged. It took us 50+ years to confirm the date of his discharge: 20 April 1968, almost one-month after he joined the BPP.

According to Military Intelligence and FBI documents, Rush was “living off base with his family, without permission.” His wife and he had just had their first son on 19 April 1968. Rush returned to base, before he could be technically charged with being AWOL. He was honorably discharged, and immediately and voluntarily re-enlisted in the US Army Reserve. He was reassigned to St. Louis, with permission to live off-base in Chicago. J. Edgar Hoover ordered the FBI to drop their investigation of Rush once his AWOL status and his relationship to SNCC and Bob Brown was clarified.

Many Black Panther leaders openly boast about their service in the military, and their politicization, including Bobby Seale. Many of us who were draft resisters and deserters, also openly discuss our experiences. Most former soldiers claim that they were honorably or dishonorably discharged before joining the Movement, before joining the Black Panther Party. Rush has repeatedly lied over the past five decades, refusing to admit that he was on active duty, from at last late March to 20 April 1968, while serving as Minister of Defense of the BPP for Self-Defense in Chicago. How long was Rush in military reserve while a member of the Chicago BPP?

• Brown, Rush, Hampton, Tommy Carter, the then director of South Suburban SNCC, and a constellation of others, struggled from March to November 1968 to build the Party in Chicago. Thousands of pages of declassified and other records document this day-to-day struggle. Kwame Ture traveled to Chicago several times in 1968 to help build the Party, until he left the country on 17 December 1968 to go home to Africa, to Guinea.

From June 1968, COINTELPRO and cointelpro-like operations, from the right and the left, against Brown and Hampton escalated. We outline a few of them here.

• The 5^th of June 1968 was Bob Browns 20^th birthday. Bobby Kennedy won the South Dakota and California Democratic presidential primaries. He was mortally wounded shortly after midnight at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He was pronounced dead 26 hours later. We, like millions of other people worldwide, continue to believe that he was assassinated by the US government, President Lyndon Johnson, and the Democratic Party.
• One day earlier, on 4 June 1968, Mohammed Skikada Mostafa, a Jordanian owner of Mike’s Food and Liquor Store in Chicago, contracted Yaree Ameer and Michael Walton, his brother, to kill Abder Rayyan, a Jordanian co-owner of Supreme Grocery in Chicago. Rayyan was murdered on 8 June 1968, and the Waltons were paid $3,000. They ran to Lowndes County, Alabama to hide, where they had volunteered two years earlier, at Ture’s request, to serve as poll watchers and security during the November 1966 elections in Lowndes County.

The Walton’s were captured In Lowndes, returned to Chicago, and indicted on 30 July 1968. They pled guilty, were convicted, and sentenced to 40 to 75 years. Their sentence was reduced to 15 to 30 years, and Yaree served at least 30. Mostafa’s conviction was over-turned on appeal. Three theories were originally tossed around as motive: robbery; revenge for Rayyan’s son’s desertion of Mostafa’s daughter; and revenge for the role that Sirhan Sirhan played in the murder of Bobby Kennedy.

Because of Ameer’s affiliation with SNCC, Ture and Brown, the FBI in Chicago, claimed, or at least implied, that Bob Brown, director of the Chicago SNCC Office, was implicated in this assassination. The FBI in Chicago lied to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI nationwide. . On 10 June 1968, Hoover sent a memo to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the Secretary of State, the Director of the CIA, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of the Army, the Department of the Air Force, the White House Situation Room and the Secret Service stating that Yaree Ameer, also known as “Robert Smith is the leader of a group of Young Black Militants and was formerly a close associate of Student Nonviolent Committee Coordinating Officials, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and Bob Brown.”

The Walton’s confessed to their role, as part of a plea bargain, and served their time. The FBI and Chicago police knew that Bob Brown and Yaree Ameer were at odds with each other because Brown refused to join the East Side Disciple gang, Ameer’s gang. The FBI and Chicago police helped exacerbate these differences and used them in several COINTELPRO operations against Brown. Luckily, these FBI and police operations were not successful. The FBI and the Chicago police also knew that Ameer threatened to kill Brown at least twice: after his arrest because Brown refused to find him a lawyer, and after his release from prison more than three decades later.

• On 10 June 1968, Fred Hampton and sixteen other Panthers were indicted for kidnapping and torture; this case never went to trial. On 10 July 1968, Hampton was falsely accused and convicted during the “great ice cream truck robbery.”
• On 18 June 1968, Brown was drafted to serve in the US war against Vietnam. “Hell No, he did not go,” and he openly called for “Victory to the Viet Cong!” He was arrested on 17 July 1968, and he fought like hell to not go to jail. Kermit Coleman served as his attorney, and English-Palmer raised his bail bond. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the peace and anti-draft movement in Chicago did not support Brown, with exception of one kind, old white man: Johnny “Appleseed” Rosen.

Mr. Rosen was a former member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He owned the Three Penny cinema and most of the Spanish language movie theaters in Chicago. He also owned the building that served as the National Headquarters of the Students for a Democratic Society and the Weatherman and was one of their key supporters and donors. Mr Rosen introduced me to Obed Lopez and the Latin American Defense Organization, and several people who were leadership in the Latin Kings gang and Young Lords Organizations.

The draft was smashed, tens of thousands did not go to Vietnam, and the Viet Cong won, politically at least. Where is the peace movement today when Ukraine and Eastern Europe is on fire? Why is most of it supporting the United Snakes government today, supporting the interest of imperialism, of the military-industrial complex, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the George Soros and other foundations?

• In August 1968, FBI infiltrators and agents in the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense played Russian roulette with Jim Foreman. A war, one of the bloodiest wars the Movement would have ever seen, was narrowly averted. SNCC severed all relationships with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Ture was wrongly accused of complicity in this COINTELPRO operation against Forman and against the Panther-SNCC alliance. Ture refuse, correctly so, to sever relationships with the BPP for Self-Defense.
• Bob Brown was ordered by National SNCC to call a press conference immediately, denounce Kwame Ture, Miriam Makeba, and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, or he was fired. Brown told them, “You did not hire me, you cannot not fire me; fuck you, I quit.” Brown closed the SNCC office in Chicago, and never looked back. Brown escalated his work to help build the Black Panther Movement in Chicago and the Midwest.
• The BPP Office in Chicago was opened on 1 November 1968. William O’Neil was the first of at least eleven FBI and thirty-six police informants to walk through the Panthers’ door. On 22 November 1968, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense convened a National Retreat in Oakland and invited the leadership of its chapters and wannabe chapters for an Orientation. According to the Party there were at least twenty-five chapters, and more than 2,000 cadre. At least 10 to 15 of these chapters were founded or co-founded by SNCC cadre.

Ture invited Bob Brown to come to the Bay Area and agreed to pay his ticket to introduce him and formalize the status of the Chicago Chapter. Despite the lie that Rush and David Hilliard repeatedly tells, the chapter was already recognized by Ture and Cleaver, the movement, the press and the FBI and the police.

Brown was on bail and could not travel without permission from the Court. He declined Ture’s invitation and sent Bobby Rush instead. Brown chose not to risk additional time in prison. Ture paid Rush’s ticket and introduced him to members of the Central Committee as agreed. Rush went to Oakland and sided with David Hilliard and other forces who were against Ture and SNCC. Rush openly and arrogantly lied about this. He blamed Ture for “high living with Makeba” and declared that he “moved away” from Ture. When questioned why, “he told Brown that Ture did not feed him.” Rush has never openly admitted that he moved away from Bob Brown as well, and that Bob Brown moved away from him.

• Brown will never forget this or the statement that Rush made a quarter century later when Brown demanded that he not oppose Congressman Charlie’s Hayes’ re-election in 1993. Rush told Brown, “it is a once in a lifetime opportunity.” Brown did not oppose his election bid and was not to vote in Chicago. Rush opportunistically “seized the time.” He served 30 years in Congress, two years longer than Congressman William Dawson. He has recently retired, claiming to have done more for the 1^st District than Congress Dawson did. Nothing is further from the truth. The 1^st District is ground zero for the corruption, crack cocaine and crimes in the ghetto of Chirac today. Rush did not create these problems, but he was too powerless to stop them. The day-to-day condition of the lives of the poorest of the poor who live or formerly lived in his District prove this fact.

Rush declared in the 2019 Mayoral Campaign that “the blood of the next young black man or black woman who is killed by the police was” on Lori Lightfoot’s hands. I do not justify Mayor Lightfoot, or the crimes against African and World humanity that she has committed and continue to commit, especially the crime of refusing to implement the Dorothy Tilman Slavery Records Era Disclosure Ordinance. But honesty and integrity demand that Congressman Rush admit that the buck stops with him for the tears, sweat and blood, and the opportunities and lives that was lost during his thirty years. Nothing personal!

• Eldridge Cleaver left the United States in November 1968, and went into exile, to escape going back to prison. He was a “revolutionary hero,” a Marxist-Leninist, a socialist and internationalist, a guerrilla leader, or so he told us, and so we thought and hoped. He was also a millionaire thanks to Ramparts Magazine and the royalties he made from Soul on Ice. He had abandoned his Marxist-Leninist beliefs, which he tried to impose on us, when he returned to the United States in 1975. He had abandoned them, if he ever believed in them, years before.
• Over the next 23 years Cleaver worked with Sun Myung Moon's campus ministry organization(“CARP). He founded a revivalist ministry called Eldridge Cleaver Crusades and the "Guardians of the Sperm." He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was a conservative Republican working with Chuck Colson’s prison ministry. Kathleen Cleaver, his former wife, and a former member of SNCC, arranged a telephone call between Ture and Cleaver before Cleaver made his transition in May 1998, and before Ture went home to Guinea in preparation for his. I can imagine the Panther meetings in Heaven or Hell for the over last 50+ years. Smile!
• Kwame Ture left the United States in December 1968, but his departure was diametrically different than Cleaver’s. Ture was not running away from, or abandoning the struggle as Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Dr. Peniel Joseph and other falsely claim, or to avoid arrest. Ture did not become irrelevant as they also claim, no more than the Honorable Marcus Garvey, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, Brick Top, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Assata Shakur, Huey P. Newton or Clever himself became.

Ture never felt home in the United States, not since he was brought here by his parents as an 11-year-old child; and he never wanted his children to live, go to school or visit here. He went home to Africa, to Guinea, not to exile. During his lifetime, Ture held British, United States, Guinea and Ugandan Diplomatic and Trinidadian and Toboggan Passports. He also held two Honorary PhDs, one from Shaw University.

Ture continued to help build the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense until his resignation on 3 July 1969. He continued to believe in Nkrumahism-Toureism and to help build the A-APRP for another thirty years, until his transition on 15 November 1998. Ture’s revolutionary commitment and contributions increased and intensified.

• Bobby Seale traveled and was in and out of jail repeatedly in 1968 and 1969. David Hilliard assumed control over the leadership of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Raymond “Masai” Hewitt became acting Minister of Defense. They ordered Bobby Rush and Fred Hampton to abandon Black Nationalism, to declare themselves Marxist-Leninists, and to abandon the struggle to build an independent, all Black, revolutionary political party. Hampton and Rush served breakfast to children and built a Rainbow Coalition instead.

They did not know, and do not admit that black is the only primary color that is not in the rainbow; or that SNCC and SCLC were struggling to build principled coalitions with Arab (especially Palestinian), Puerto Rican, Chicano, Indigenous and other peoples, and organizations at least two years prior to the birth of the second litter of the BPP of Illinois. They did not know the true history then, and do not know the true history today of our relationship white liberal and left organizations worldwide. The A-APRP ^(GC) intensifies this struggle today.

• History records how many times, and by how many different forces within our community, since at least the 1300s when the Trans-Atlantic trafficking in and enslavement of African People was founded by the Catholic Church and its Portuguese Order of Christ, have sold the masses of African People out. The condition of African People today, in every corner of Africa and the African Diaspora, especially in the 1st Congressional District in Chirac, is proof of this treachery, and of the powerlessness and poverty that African People continue to suffer. Kwame Ture is correct, “black visibility is not Black Power,” and “Pan-Africanism is the highest political expression of Black Power.”

Kwame Ture, Bob Brown, and hundreds of others resigned from the Black Panther Movement, and we never looked back. We have been principled and silent for 53 years. We never publicly attacked Newton, Seale, or Cleaver, Rush or Hampton, the Black Panther Movement or any of its litters. We escalated and continued our work to help build the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party. We remain principled and are not attacking them now; and we continue to escalate our work to build the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party ^(GC) today.

There is much, much, much more! The true history of the Black Panther Movement in Chicago and the World is contested space. It demands to be told, written, and filmed.

As you are aware, we have been struggling to build a Kwame Ture Papers and Movie Project since Ture’s transition on 15 November 1998. We have also been struggling to write a book titled The War against Kwame Ture and produce a movie titled Kwame Ture Still Dances in the Fire! You cannot believe the sabotage and problems we have encountered. We stand on the eve, hover on the cliff of a historic and precedent-setting launch.

We have presented a small sample of what Bob Brown did as a 20-year-old kid; and the war, of the left and the right, that was waged against Ture, him and us, to prevent the rise of the Black Panther Movement in Chicago, and the World; and to coopt and destroy it when we succeeded, albeit not as Kwame Ture, bob Brown, SNCC and we had planned.

We will correct our errors in this Note as best we can, with your help. You cannot believe what we have done over the past 54-years, what we are doing today, and what we dream of doing over our remaining years. Money has never been a motivating force in our life, and never will be, and we have uncompromising and utter contempt for those for whom it is. We need and ask for your help!

• Please forward this Note from the Barricades to your social media and movement platforms, co-workers, friends, and family worldwide.
• Please click here, to make a donation to help Pan-African Roots complete and launch this Project. It is a 501c3, tax-exempt, fiscally sponsored project of the Alliance for Global Justice.

Please also support the causes listed on the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party ^(GC) website!

Thank you in advance for all that you have down and will do!

Bob Brown

Director, Pan-African Roots

Organizer, A-APRP (GC)

paroots02@yahoo.com