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

They also displayed a propensity towar+da violence that stemmod from their
upbringings . David Hilliard, Chiefof Staff of the Black Panther Party and Huey's
childhood friend, explained his growing up in Mobile, Alabama, and later Oakland :
Quick, powerful hands ar+e something to respect ; and there is nothing strange
about people being beaten, cut, even killed. Violence is an accepted condition of
life. If you go to the store or clubs you run the risk of a fight . On Friday nights,
and whenever theoe's a family argument, and especially when people start pouring
their alcohol, you can be fairly certain that somebody's going to do something
before too long. Ther+e's going to be some shit, as the saying goes . Violence is
the norm ; because of this, violence is part of my personality, part of my value
system . I grow up expecting it, always on the alert, never relaxed, never lowering
my vigilance~~
Hilliard shared this culture of violence with other Panthers, like Seale and Newton, who
grew up poor and black in the city. Violence, particularly self-defense, came quite
naturally to them . Hilliard's family encouraged him, as a boy, to act violently ; on one
occasion, his mother bought a handgun for him at a local pawnshop and encouraged him
to hunt down his tormentor, another schoolboy . After another altercation with a white
boy, she told her son, "I don't caro what color that boy was . If he hit you first you had a
right to fight him . In fact, if you hadn't hit him, I would have hit you."~ His father felt
the same way, expecting his childron to stand up for their self-respat. "[I]f you got hit,
you'd better hit back . That was the rule we grew up with ."~° Hilliard's parents punished
4~David Hilliard and Lewis Cole, This Side of Glorv: The Autobio~anhy of David
Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Partv (Boston : Back Bay Books, 1993), 40 .
~]~, 97 .
~, 23 . Huey Newton's father encouraged similar behavior. "You can take a
killing," he would say, "but you can't take a beating." j~j~, 71 .
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