3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

wec+e elocted she would "tsx the rich and fad the poor'; she felt that poor blacks and
whites reaped no benefits from their tax money . ~ ~
The seven were to run under the banner of the Black Panther Party, whose image
symbolized the empowerment of those involved. As John Hulett said, "He [the panther)
never bothers anything, but when you start pushing him, he moves backwards,
backwards, and backwards into his corner, and then he comes out to destroy everything
that's beforo him."~2 Some claimed that the vivid image of the black cat derived from
Courtland Cox, a SNCC activist said to c+esemble a panther. Moc+e practically, the symbol
of the panther served to identify candidates for those voters who could not read and write,
but who could pull the lever in the voting booth for those candidates on the ballot with a
panther icon by their names: ballots actually had representations of black panthers
imprinted on them .
The nominating convention did not go unchallenged . The county sheriff nrfused
to let the LCFO use the courthouse, and deputized S50 white men to carry out his order .
John Hulett, chairman of the [.CFO, said that the blacks would come armed too . At the
last minute, Attorney General Richmond Flowers, in conjunction with the U.S .
Department of Justice, worked out a compromise to avoid bloodshed, and Hulett agnxd
to hold the convention at a nearby church .
~ ~Moore, in Lowndes County Fradom OrQani^tion , video nxording .
~2Hulett's description of a panther's behavior when backed into a corner mirrors
conventional justifications of self-defense, which prrsume that the defendant has no other
means of escape from the assailant.
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