Panther reunion focuses on political prisoners 

by Nisa Islam Muhammad
Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com)-The names of the martyrs were remembered April 18-20 at the 35th anniversary reunion of the Black Panther Party held at the University of the District of Columbia.

According to Akua Njeri, widow of slain Chicago chapter leader Fred Hampton, "I don't think the Black Panthers will ever be seen in the same light as the rest of the '60s. The Black Panthers changed the terrain and the ability to resist oppression. The Black Power Movement opened the door for the gay liberation movement, the women's movement, all those other rights groups came through the door we opened."

A major part of the reunion, which drew former members from across the country and Capitol Hill, was addressing the list of incarcerated members that remain behind bars, languishing for crimes they claim they did not commit.

Speaking at the panel on political prisoners, Safiya Bukhari, co-coordinator of the Jericho Movement, an effort to release inmates, estimated 40 Panthers are still incarcerated.

"Because of the smear campaign in the media and the COINTELPRO program, there was no way they could get a trial favorable to them," said Ms. Bukhari, who also spent nine years in prison on charges stemming from a shootout between Panthers and police.

"Panthers have forgotten about Panthers in jail," shouted Nzinga Conway, whose husband Marshall "Eddie" Conway has been locked up for the past 32 years at the maximum security Maryland House of Corrections. 

"The struggle continues and the urgency is still here to do something," she said. "I don't want you to forget about Eddie Conway and all the other political prisoners."

The list of men and women incarcerated because of their Panther activities includes the case of Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, who was released from prison in 1997 after serving 25 years for murder. He was granted a new trial after the judge questioned the credibility of a prosecution witness. 

Dhouruba Bin Wahad (formerly known as Richard Moore) was freed after serving 19 years in prison when the New York judge found that the FBI had suppressed evidence in his 1971 murder trial. He received a $1 million settlement from the FBI.

Assata Shakur, sentenced for murdering a New Jersey State trooper, escaped from prison in 1979 and lives in exile in Cuba.

"One thing that unifies us to this day is our membership in the party and our passion for social justice. The issue of Panthers who are still unjustly behind bars is part of the same struggle," former Panther organizer Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) told The Final Call.

In the beginning

With Black leather jackets and black berets, the Panthers started in Oakland, Ca., led by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The Black revolutionary party attracted youth from coast to coast with their titles of "comrade," their service to the people and their willingness to fight gunfire with gunfire.

"No one was confronting the system and something needed to be done," Baltimore Panther Sherry Brown told The Final Call.

What they did was laid a foundation for public service that many governments follow today. Nearly every school system around the country has free lunch and free breakfast for poor students. The Panthers started that.

They developed a 10-point program that called for freedom for Black people from capitalist exploitation and police brutality, full employment, reparations, decent housing, decent education, free health care, an end to war and military service, freedom for political prisoners, trials by juries of Black peers and the right to secession from the United States.

"I felt that to overcome racism we had to confront the system which is what we did. We had programs that served the people. We did our part and left a legacy to pass on to the youth," said Ms. Brown.

But White America, perhaps, remembers the Panthers for their "Death to the Pig" mantra against police brutality. Panther agitation also attracted the attention of the FBI, which targeted the Panthers and other Black groups for elimination. 

With 48 Panther offices around the country and thousands of comrades serving the people, the government's counter intelligence program assigned agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect or otherwise neutralize the activities of Black nationalists É" wrote the infamous FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in a memo to field agents.

In the '70s, a wave of police raids and shootouts in California, Chicago and New York ushered in the dismantling of the party, leaving many Panthers dead or imprisoned. FBI agent provocateurs started many of the confrontations. 

The list of fallen comrades include 17-year-old Bobby Hutton, the first Panther to fall in a confrontation with police, Mark Clark, Fred Hampton and brothers Jonathan and George Jackson.

The same struggle

Attorney Malik Zulu Shabazz heads The New Black Panther Party-young men and women who grew up hearing about the Panthers and want to blaze a new trail.

"We're connected because we're on the same mission of what they started. We're continuing the legacy they started. We have some improvements because we're in a different time but we're doing the same work," he told The Final Call.

The New Black Panther Party is engaged in youth programs, a food and clothing program, town hall meetings and dealing with police brutality.

"Whenever Black people are in trouble, the New Black Panther Party has the ability to tackle the issues whether it's in the streets or wherever the struggle needs to be taken. We need the Black Panther Party as much as we need the Nation of Islam. We need Black organizations that are uncompromising," he said

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