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

lack organization, brother," Newton rcplied.~~ Their weaponry was not only an
empowering accoutrement but also a billboard to advertise the Panthers and their ideas.
The Panthers did not cury their weapons everywhere, and at times were
conspicuously warmed.
We don't take guns with us to implement these programs [e .g ., the Free Breakfast
program], but we understand and know from ourown history that we're going to
be attacked, and that we have to be able to defend ourselves. They're going to
attack us viciously and fascisticly [sic] and try to say it was all justifiable
homicide, in the same manner they've always attacked black people in the black
communities! 2
Whether Newton and Seale were justified in their fears or simply paranoid seems
relatively clear. Their personal histories certainly bear out their claims of police
harassment and brutality. As youths, both were repeatedly incarcerated and, according to
their autobiographies, menaced by police. The two men perceived a serious threat from
police not only to their personal survival but also to the survival of the race, and armed
themselves accordingly.43 The seventh point in the Ten-Point Program specifically
addressed police brutality and the "murder of black people" by police. For Newton and
~~Seale, A LonelyItT, 154 .
42Seale, Seize the Time, 418 .
~~Sterling Tucker, Executive Director of the Urban League in Washington, D.C .,
argued in 1971 that "no discussion of black violence can be undertaken without reference
to white America's shield and defender. the police." He noted: "In virtually every
situation where blacks have advocated the carrying of arms, it has been for the purposes
of self-defense against the violence of white America's cops . In consequence, the issue of
black `violence' cannot be understood separately from that of the police, their practices
and policies, and their relations with the ghetto community." Sterling Tucker, For Blacks
Only : Black Strategjes for Chance in America (Grand Rapids, Michigan : William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971), 40 .
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