Word: panther
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When Newton emerged from prison in 1970, he found the Panthers divided into rival factions. One reason was that the FBI had begun a campaign of dirty tricks-counterfeit Panther documents, fake denunciations of various Panthers as police informants-in an effort to disrupt what the agency's Washington intelligence chief called "the most violence prone of all the extremist groups...
During her regime, the Panthers pursued a number of social enterprises that had been started under Newton. They founded and still operate the Oakland Community School, which provides high-level education to 150 ghetto kids. There was and is a program that helps old people to go out shopping and another that provides school lunches. One Panther program offers dances for teen-agers and training in martial arts. Says Oakland County Supervisor John George: "Huey could take street-gang types and give them a social consciousness...
...summer of 1977, Newton figured that the political climate had mellowed enough for him to risk coming home. Three months later, the Panther Party was back in the police news. One night in October, three heavily armed men, dressed in dark blue jumpsuits and wearing black ski masks and gloves, started shooting through the door of a home in Richmond, Calif. The occupant, a black woman named Mary Matthews, 56, fired back with the .38-cal. revolver she kept by her bed. One man fell, killed by a burst of machine-gun fire-from behind. The two others fled...
...weeks after this, a Panther named Nelson Lee Malloy was found, moaning, under a pile of stones in the Nevada desert. He had been shot and left for dead. As a result, Malloy is paralyzed for life from the neck down. He reluctantly told police that he had helped two Panthers escape after the attempted assassination of Gray, and that the Panthers had tried to silence...
Newton talks of a bright future. Although the Panthers now number no more than 500, roughly half their strength a decade ago, he sees them as "very much alive because our survival programs are alive." He has been studying at the University of California for a doctorate in the history of social consciousness, and he looks forward to teaching at the Panther school and participating in local politics. "I plan to work in Oakland," he says. "I love Oakland...