Newspaper Page Text
2A
MARCH 23, 2000
Al-Amin never was a Black Panther
From page one
“In the media circus that sur
rounds the saga of H. Rap Brown,
the bit of information that sur
faces repeatedly is his alleged
membership in the Black Pan
ther Party. H. Rap Brown was a
member of the Student Nonvio
lent Coordinating Committee (re
ferred to as SNCC — pronounced
‘Snick’), not the Black Panther
Party.
Although there was a brief as
sociation between some of the
leaders of SNCC (including
Brown) and the Black Panther
Party, H. Rap Brown was never a
real bona fide member of the Black
Panther Party. The image of
Brown, his monstor Afro tucked
beneath the black beret, hugging
the rough stock of a sawed-off
shotgun, yelling, “death to the
pigs'"” while he traded lead with
racist police on the streets of
America was never a reality. H.
Rdp Brown was no more a Black
Panther than was D.C. mayor
Marion Barry, the NAACP's
Julian Bond, or Congressman
John Lewis — all former mem
bers of SNCC
H Rap Brown's brief associa
tion with the Black Panther Party
amounted to his appearing on
platforms with other radicals for
afew months in 1967 and making
speeches on behalf of Huey P.
Newton, the embattled founder of
the Black Panther Party who was
in and out of jail that year.
Confusion about Brown and the
Black Panther Party is under
standable for anyone who is not
intimate with thedynamics of the
civil rights movement in general—
and that aspect of the movement
which dealt with the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Com
mittee in particular.
The tenous “merger” between
the Student Nonviolent Coordi
nating Committee and the Black
Panther Party for Self Defense
lasted less than a year and was
never more than a proposed ar
rangement where the Black Pan
therorganization could utilize the
superior adminstrative appara
Peach Care
expanded
“rom page one
iren are eligible for the program,
ind the state ranks fourth in its
hild health care coverage, be
und California, Florida and New
‘ork — all states with approxi
nately one million eligible chil
ren, according to published sta
-Istics.
Almost $lO million is budgeted
r the program, with approxi
ately $3 million coming from
tate tobacco money, while an
ther $6 million will be provided
irough federal funds.
Representatives in the house
oted 143 to 20 for the bill's pas
age last month.
; m—
Bring your census forms to
the “Party with a Purpose.” ‘
JoinJ. Anthony Brown at BL's
Country Kitchen on Thurs
day, March 30, from 6 to 10
a.m. See page 16A for details!
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AUGUSTAFOCUS
tus of SNCC and SNCC jump start
its organization whose influence
had begun to wane after the ma-
Jor civil rights advances up until
that time.
In his book Revolutionary Sui
cide, published in 1973, Huey P.
Newton, chairman and founder of
the Black Panther Party wrote: “1
had to respect the Student Non
violent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) for having some of the
most disciplined organizersin the
country. When we had first talked
of forming a party, Bobby (Seale)
and I read about their work in the
South — registering people to vote
and organizing cooperatives and
the like. We felt they could do a
good job of administering the
Party because they were all com
mitted people and highly skilled.
Their leadership came from coi
lege campuses.”
According to Newton, the Pan
thers’ original plan was to draft
Stokely Carmichael (SNCC's most
notorious leader), into the Party
and make him Prime Minister,
then to add all the SNCC leader
shiptothe Party’s administrative
positions, including H. Rap Brown
and James Forman. Newton ac
tually wanted a merger of SNCC
and the Panthers because he rec
ognized the talent assembled un
der the SNCC umbrella.
But the merger never occurred.
Newton blamed mistrust on the
part of the SNCC leadership.
“They (Stokely, Brown, Forman)
were supposed to inform the rest
of the governing body of SNCC,”
Newton said. “We thought this
had been done when Brown and
Forman indicated that SNCC ap
proved of the merger. But the
scheme never worked out as we
had hoped.
“We later found out that it had
all been empty talk on their part.
There was no real trust, because
SNCC’s people believed we
wanted to take over their organi
zation, whereas the reverse was
true: we intended to give them
complete control.”
Brown, in his book Die Nigger
Die, published in 1969, does not
even mention the Black Panther
Party even though he discussesin
detail the events of 1967 when he
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was shot by police and subse
quently jailed.
Any successful dream merger
of the two premier militant orga
nizations during the black libera
tions struggles of the 60s had to
overcome some formidable ideo
logical roadblocks.
In 1967, America was in sad
shape. Young men were fighting
and dying in Vietnam. On the
streets of America’s inner cities,
heroin was running rampant and
police brutality was commonplace.
The group which was at the
forefront of the so-called black
liberation movement was the
Black Panther Party But as pow
erful an image as the Black Pan
thers projected, they were still a
very local movement whose base
of power by 1967 never really
reached beyond Oakland, Cali
fornia. They had a charismatic
leader in Newton and a dynamic
propagandist in Eldridge Cleaver
Huey was an intellectual, a col
lege student who liked to quote
Nietzsche and Mao Tse Tung and
Cleaver was a small-time hood
who had a genius for attracting
publicity. His prison writings,
Soul on Ice, was running up the
best seller lists and his creation
The Black Panther community
newspaper reached out to black
ghettoes across the country.
SNCC, on the other hand, was
largely based in the South. Its
leaders were all black intellectu
als who forged a student organi
zation with spearheaded voter
registration drives and agitated
for desegregation in Mississippi,
Alabama, and Georgia. During
the first part of the decade of the
‘6os, they provided many of
ground troops for the civil rights
campaign. Although they were
often at odds with the more tradi
tional civil rights organizers like
Dr. Martin Luther King's South
ern Christian Leadership Confer
ence, the kids at SNCC were a
vital part of the struggle in the
South. But after the civil rights
gains of the mid-60s, the organi
zation moved beyond the realm of
civil rights into the arena of hu
man rights and eventually flirted
with world-wide socialist rebel
lion. Brown succeeded Stokely
Carmichael as the group’s chair
man in 1967. By the time Brown
took over leadership of SNCC, it
had already alienated its core of
white supporters who bolted af
ter the organization made over
tures to the Palestine Liberation
movement, angering white-Jew
ish activists who had supported
the organization throughout the
civil rights struggle.
While Brown was never a part
of the outwardly aggressive Black
Panthers, his own brand of mili
tancy was enough to make the
authorities nervous without al
luding to the Panthers. Brown
always had the “bad brother” per
sona. He never believed in non
violence.
“Ever since Ed [his brother] and
I have been active in the Move
ment, we've always carried our
guns. I've always had the utmost
confidence in me and the gun.
Give me a gun before you even
give me somebody towork with. A
gun won't fail you, people will,”
Brown said in his book.
“Nonviolence might have been
tactically correct at one time in
order to get some sympathy for
the Movement, but for me as an
individual, it just never worked.
And I didn't try to convince my
self that it would work.
“I figured that if the police could
carry a gun to police my commu
nity, then I should carry one to
police them and the other uppity
crackers. The first gun [ owned, |
stole from a sporting store when |
was fourteen.
“I've been around guns all my
life... The only thing “the man's”
going to respect is that .45 or .38
you got. That's what it all boils
down to,” Brown wrote.
If H. Rap Brown ak.a. Jamil
Abdullah Al-Amin had resorted
to violence to solve a problem, it
had nothing to do with his being a
Black Panther. Clearly, he was
never a Black Panther the way a
gullible American public might
suppose. It was his statement,
that “violence is as American as
apple pie,” that foreshadowed
the events of the past week that
led to the ultimate Americaniza
tion of H. Rap Brown.
More farms invaded as
ex-guerillas ignore court order
By MICHAEL HARTHMACK
Associated Press Wniter
HARARE, Zimbabwe
Thousands of squatters ignored
a judge’s order to leave white
owned farmland Sunday, deep
ening a confrontation between de
scendants of British settlers and
poor blacks, many of them veter
ans of Zimbabwe's independence
war.
Police made no move to enforce
Judge Paddington Garwe's order,
made Friday, for the squatters to
abandon within 24 hours the land
they began occupying several
weeks ago. Government officials
appeared to encourage the squat
ters.
“Ifthe African people want land
now, whatever judgment comes
from the courts or government,
the liberation struggle continues,”
Information Minister Chen
Chimutengwende said in a radio
interview.
A crowd bussed in from Harare
by President Robert Mugabe's
ruling ZANU-PF party reportedly
marched through the Enterprise
Valley, 30 miles northeast of the
capital, and warned farmers they
would be evicted and their land
redistributed to black Zimbabwe
ans. The incident oécurred on
Saturday, according to a farming
community leader who spoke on
Fuel costs escalate
From page one
own their vehicle, Fields said. Ra
dio Cab has about 78 cars and
Curtis Cab has about 20 cars
At the downtown location where
the company has called headquar
ters since the mid-19505, Fields
says the gas situation 1s becoming
critical.
“We're trying to ride it out. But,
it's getting close to the point where
we'llhave to ask them (the county)
for changes.” In the short-run, like
recent actions by Washington, D C
cab drivers, Fields said 1t may be
logical to consider adding a tempo
rary surcharge of 50 cents per trip
to compensate for the gas prices
Curtis Cab agrees the surcharge
could be a temporary fix
Meanwhile, because no special
provisions were made by county
officials before fuel prices started
rising in the past couple months,
local cab companies must do their
best to make trips profitable
especially during the annual trek
of duffers to the course developed
by the late, legendary golfer Bobby
Jones.
On a related note, visitors mak
ing the trip to Augusta for the
Masters golf tournament won't
have to worry about cab drivers
charging different fares, thanks to
a policy approved by the county.
Overall, the city’s cab companies
are in favor of a flat-fare svstem
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Diamond Eternity Rings exhibit breathtaking brilliance from both the
palm and the back of the hands.
... Monday - Saturday
3 )am - 9
m:.muuu& WINDSOR /1: am -9 pm
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condition of anonymity.
Some 600 properties have been
occupied since Mugabe lost a ref
erendum last month on a new
constitution that would have
given him power to seize white
owned land without compensa
tion.
David Hasluck, executive direc
tor of the Commercial Farmers
Union, said state radio and televi_
sion have refused to comply with~
Garwe's order for them to broad
cast details of his order
The occupations threaten pro
duction of the country’s food and
major export crop, tobacco
About 4,000 white farmers,
mostiy the descendants of British
settlers, own about a third of the
country’s productive land. Known
as Rhodesia, Zimbabwe was a
British colony before indepen
dence 1n 1980
Since 1980, the state has bought
more than 2,000 white farms for
resettlement, but the program has
been plagued by mismanagement
and corruption
The government has nearly 2
million acres of agricultural land
that has not been used for re
settlement and mostly lies idle
The government says it can't af
ford to parcel up the land into
smaller plots and install roads,
water pipes and other vital infra
structure
approved by the county last month
which 1s effective during Masters
Week, Apnil 2 through Apnl 10
According to Frelds, the flat-fare
system which will be charged by all
city cab companies, 1s a practice
that should curtail any price-gaug
ing that may have occurred in pre-
VIOUS vears.
Last vear, smd Fields, compa
nies were not “on the same page.”
sotospeak and charged customers
varving rates based each individual
company’s prices
“We charged customers the
meter rate even though m some
instances, we probably didn't
charge asmuch aswe should have,”
said Fields After receving com
plaints (via the Richmond County
hecensing department ) from out-of
town golf toursts who thought they
may have been over-charged,
Fields said he met with some of his
cab company competitors in an ef
fort to resolve any price-gauging
Issues prior to the 2000 Masters
tournament week
“We sat down and agreed on a
rate we thought was fair for all the
drivers and the companies. The
rate was established by the county
and this makes it easier for every
one — including the customer
Now, evervone knows exactly what
to charge,” said Fields, who has
worked for Radio Cab, the aty's
largest taxi service, since 1973