Word: panther
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Last May, at the Panther Mayday demonstrations, everybody went to New Haven expecting the worst. Paratroop divisions were airlifted in from North Carolina, Yale organized a corps of medics incredibly well equipped. Papers that weekend printed sections on first aid and self defense...
When things started getting hot, though, some Panther leaders went around and told everybody to keep calm and go home. We learned, they said, you can't fight the U.S. Army with bottles and rocks...
Then Hoover turned to the Black Panther Party, warning that the newly opened Panther office in Algiers was a symbol of growing ties between the radical group and Arab terrorists. Hoover added that "militants may seek to ape Arab tactics, including airplane hijackings, to gain release of jailed Panther members...
...situation at Yale last spring was an independent organism, towering over the people involved. Every side: students, Panthers, police, administration, struggled to define its own position, and everyone agreed that he was not trying to attack anyone else. Kingman Brewster said that he doubted that black revolutionaries could get a fair trial: Big Man, the Panther spokesman, called for solidarity with students and radicals; the police chief announced that his men would keep a low profile; a group of students and faculty members offered to ride around in unmarked patrol cars and help the police break up incidents...
NOTHING Hersey says about the Yale faculty or administration would contradict the idea that they acted out of naivete, not cynicism. His account of the faculty meeting at which Yale decided its position on the Panther trial makes it a ceremony of innocence, with total catharsis coming when Brewster rises to say, "I am appalled, ashamed that things should have come to such a pass that I am skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the United States." Suddenly, with this statement, Yale finds a purpose, and the whole university joins...