Dec. 8, 2009, marks the 40th anniversary of the Los Angeles Police Department's shootout at the Southern California Black Panther Party's headquarters.
Local members of the party will honor those who survived the altercation with a program at 6 p.m. at the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research at 6120 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles.
Entitled "Victory: A Day of Remembering," the program will include eyewitness accounts from members involved in the shootout, as well as a viewing of the film "41st and Central" by filmmaker Gregory Everett.
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP), co-founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, was a community-based organization with a platform that called for a number of rights and liberties for black people, including free healthcare, full employment, decent housing, and decent education. The platform also called for an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.
"That principle seemed to get the most attention," said Richard "Dhoruba" Moore, a member of the New York chapter of the BPP at the time, whose comments were made in "Framing the Panthers," a documentary about him.
The BPP emphatically espoused the right of African Americans to self-defense, up to and including resistance against local police departments — a principle that put them in conflict with law-enforcement agencies. The party also insisted that African Americans control their own political destiny, as reflected in party documents and speeches.
The BPP's commitment to such principles, in addition to their "Serve the People" programs, which included free breakfasts for children and free sickle cell anemia testing, are what led to then-Director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover's to label the organization as "the greatest single threat to the internal security of the country," in a Sept. 8, 1968 article in the New York Times article, according to "The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States," a book written by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall.
The LAPD assault of the BPP headquarters on East 41st Street and South Central Avenue occurred about four days after a similar pre-dawn raid of the party's Illinois headquarters in Chicago. The raid in Chicago killed Illinois Chairman Fred Hampton and Defense Captain Mark Clark.
Some people said they thought that a confrontation in Los Angeles between the Panthers and local police was imminent in the days before the raid at 41st and Central.
"There was a national plan for local police, egged on by the FBI, to attack Panthers all across the country," according to Ayuko Babu, currently the executive director of the Pan African Film Festival, and a community activist who worked with the Panthers at that time. "We found out about it because (an official) in Seattle, Washington, said that he wasn't going to go along with the plan. It was in all the papers at the time."
Roland Freeman, a survivor of the shootout on Central Avenue, says that a police officer had attempted to enter the party's office approximately one week before the shootout.
"He was told to leave," Freeman said. "He knew he was not welcomed in our office, a shotgun was pulled on him, and he ended up leaving."
According to Freeman, that confrontation was used as the pretext for the police to come and search for weapons.
"They had done some dry runs in the community, so they had been planning it," Freeman said. "They came in there to kill us, they were going to kill us; there's no doubt in my mind."
The LAPD's account about what led to the shootout bears some similarity to Freeman's.
"A community relations officer named Morton and two patrol officers observed the occupants of 41st and Central training their weapons on police cars and officers as they drove by," said Sgt. Chuck Buttitta with the LAPD Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team.
"Officer Morton tried to resolve the problem, and entered the headquarters and observed two occupants inside," Buttitta said. "One of the occupants inside pointed a .45 caliber weapon at Officer Morton. The other occupant picked up a shotgun and told Morton ... 'Count to three and you better be out of here.' Officer Morton exited the premises and notified supervisors and a crime report was made."
The charge was assault with a deadly weapon on police officer, Buttitta said. A search warrant was then secured for the location and the warrant was served on Dec. 8, 1969, he added.
The SWAT unit had been created in the late 1960s but their first "challenge" came with the Panther confrontation in 1969, according to the unit's website.
Under the section "Challenges Faced by S.W.A.T.," the website states: "The Black Panthers resisted and attempted to shoot it out with 40 members of the SWAT Team. In the ensuing four-hour siege, thousands of rounds of ammunition were fired, resulting in the wounding of three Panthers and three police officers. The Panthers finally surrendered to SWAT officers, whose first mission was now an indelible part of history."
Albeit for different reasons, the LAPD and the Panthers consider the event to be historic.
The Los Angeles SWAT Foundation, a nonprofit organization, sells an unofficial SWAT patch that contains the number "41" on it, which commemorates the confrontation on East 41st Street and South Central Avenue.
The patch is not worn on SWAT tactical deployment uniforms, but it can be purchased and worn on a jacket or T-shirt, Buttitta said. The patch is generally sold to other law enforcement officers.
Everett, whose film is part of a documentary project to tell the story of the Southern California chapter the BPP, says the incident was a defining moment for both the LAPD and the Panthers.
"Eleven people ... the majority of them teenagers, 19 and under, in a five-hour shootout with over 300 police officers, including SWAT," Everett said. "It's SWAT's first public mission and they break out 16 millimeter film cameras to film the event, no one is murdered, and they (the Panthers) eventually beat the case ... this is the climax of the Black Power Movement in America."
Talibah Shakir, an 18-year-old member of the party at the time, also described the confrontation as a defining moment.
"We were like, 'We're tired of turning the other cheek,'" she recalled. "We were tired of seeing our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, shot down in the street by the local police agencies, the occupying force, and then it being classified as justifiable homicide time and time again."
Babu described the incident as a victory that should be celebrated in the same way as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He cited a plaque he saw in Soweto, South Africa, as proof of the historic nature of what happened that day in 1969. Babu said he saw the plaque in 2007 at a museum dedicated to the struggle against apartheid. It was dedicated to the black youth of the United States in the 1960s who helped inspire South Africans "to stand up and carry out our struggle."
"That act on Central Avenue had a worldwide effect," Babu said.
A Dec. 24, 1971, Los Angeles Tribune article detailed the acquittal of all the Panthers involved in the Dec. 8 shootout, according to "The Cointelpro Papers."
"(It was) one of the longest trials in California history, if not the longest at the time," Freeman said. "That was a highlight of the struggle; it didn't get much better than that."
More info:
• 41st & Central: The untold story of the L.A. Black Panthers
Thandisizwe Chimurenga is an Assistant Editor at the L.A. Watts Times.
Photos courtesy of Gregory Everett and 41central.com.
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