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National Black Panther Party

The Black Panther Party (originally founded as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was founded in Oakland, California, in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.^[1] The party was originally founded as a self-defense program for African Americans against police brutality, and eventually evolved to adopt Marxist-Leninist ideologies and practices.^[1]

The Panthers reached their peak during the late 1960's, with over two thousands members in several chapters around the country

Foundation of the Des Moines Chapter

In 1967, not long after graduating from high school, Mary Rhem left home in Des Moines, Iowa to visit family in California.^[2] While there, she spent time learning from political organizers, some of whom were in the Black Panther Party, taking particular inspiration from Bunchy Carter.^[2] Inspired by her time in California, Rhem returned home and began her efforts of political organizing at which point she met Charles Knox, who had previous organizing experience with Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) in Chicago, Illinois, and Kansas City, Missouri.^[3] The two worked together to officially establish a Des Moines chapter for the Black Panther Party, and with Rhem being accredited as the official founder in February of 1968, she was one of few women to instigate the formation of a Black Panther Party branch in an otherwise male-dominated organization.^[4][2]

Leaders and Members

At its peak, the Des Moines chapter reached around 100 members. Founder Mary Rhem, alongside Charles Knox began recruitment immediately

Many members were recent high school dropouts^[3]

rank and file 288 Anderson

Community Work

Programs

In alignment with chapters across the nation, the Des Moines chapter founded several programs during its active years. In efforts to keep its chapter sober in order to most effectively enact change, they also established a Dug/Alcohol Program.^[2] A staple of the party nationwide, the Des Moines chapter also instituted a Free Breakfast Program that regularly fed around one hundred students in elementary school and junior high.^[2] The program reached across racial lines, it took in children from several communities and received help from different churches of different racial predominance.^[2] In fact, the main church they operated out of, Forest Avenue Baptist Church, was predominantly white.^[3]

The Des Moines chapter, while still following the national party's Ten Point Program, tailored their practices to cater to the needs of the Black community of Des Moines specifically.^[3] They placed heavy emphasis on Point Five in particular, that demanded "education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society."^[3] As Knox described, many new members of the chapter had recently dropped out of high school and "...couldn't read. they couldn't distinguish letters. The political classes taught them to read."^[3] To address this, each new member in the Des Moines chapter had a mandated six weeks of "political education."^[3] The Panthers wanted to combat illiteracy across the Black community in Des Moines however, and these political education classes were open for public attendance as well.^[2] These weekly gatherings, attended largely by African Americans and a few white people, would address the social inequities in the United States, specifically education and health care.^[3] The meetings would also air films, such as Huey P. Newton's Off the Pig that likened policing of African American communities to the United States' involvement in Vietnam.^[3]

Education was of such importance, in fact, that the Des Moines chapter formed its own sixteen-point program to uplift standards for public schools in Des Moines, particularly for African Americans.^[3] It was presented to the school board in collaboration with the Black Committee for Student Power that the chapter had organized.^[3] Among their demands were the teaching of African American history by Black teachers, the termination of discriminatory school class formation called "academic tracking," that racist teachers be fired.^[3]

work with Omaha and Kansas City 284 Anderson

"unequal educational, school busing, urban renewal, unemployment, and police brutality"

Headquarter Bombing and Attempted Assassinations

On the night of April 26, 1969, the Panthers' headquarters at Twelfth Street and University Avenue was bombed in an attempted assassination of the chapter's leadership.^[3][2] This came as a final attack in a string of bombings that had targeted predominantly Black communities in Des Moines throughout the month of April.^[2] The damage from the blast demolished the back half of the building and destroyed windows in around fifty nearby homes in the predominantly African American neighborhood.^[3][2] Nobody was killed nor injured from the blast, however members of the party Edward King and Johnson Hughes were pepper sprayed by police as they attempted to leave the home, which led to a scuffle and the two Panthers being arrested.^[3] The only reported injuries were that of three police officers, as the arrests of King and Hughes had angered nearby witnesses, leading to police cars being targeted by Molotov cocktails and rocks.^[2][3]

While some suspected the Minutemen, a local equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan, who regularly sent death threats to the Panthers, many believed that the Des Moines police were to blame for the bombing.^[2][3] There were several reports that the police had arrived at the Panthers' headquarters within thirty seconds of the explosion, which was a surprise, as chapter member Charles Smith testified, "I've never seen them get anywhere that fast in my life."^[3] This, combined with the types of plastics found in the bomb residue, led many within the Panthers to believe the police were to blame.^[2] Some city officials and the Des Moines police charged that the Panthers themselves had bombed the headquarters.^[3] Weeks after the explosion, a Des Moines police officer reported that three Panther members had testified at a gathering in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that in search of national attention, they had set off the explosive.^[3]

Despite a brief attempt to reorganize and salvage the headquarters, a couple of months later the chapter decided to relocate to an office building nearby at 1210 University Avenue.^[3]

Separation From the National Party and Dissolution

In the autumn of 1970, the Des Moines chapter and the national party split for a number of reasons, but largely because of disagreements in practice and theory.^[2] One major controversy was the mandated reading of Soul on Ice, a book written by Eldridge Cleaver, one of the leading figures of the Black Panther Party.^[2] Cleaver admits to serial rape in the most controversial part of the book, and Knox describes the sentiment of the Des Moines chapter on the subject: "we took a position that this guy talking about raping a black woman to practice on, to deal with a white woman, I mean we thought he was a nut then."^[2] The Des Moines chapter promptly banned the book, furthering the divide between them and the national party which had been ignited by the assassination of Fred Hampton, leader of the Illinois chapter. Hampton had served as a mediator of sorts for the chapters in the Midwest, and his murder by the Chicago police in cooperation with the FBI's COINTELPRO operation had begun to create a fissure between the national party and the chapters in the heartland.^[2] The Des Moines chapter also expressed their frustration with the national party's priority on newspaper sales as it became increasingly dependent on its revenue, so much so that a national representative came to address the issue.^[2][3] Ideological differences also drove a rift between the national party and the chapter in Des Moines, Knox saying they believed "they were misguided, that they were not putting theory into practice," and other chapter member Clive DePatten thought the disagreement was over how local chapters represented themselves: either as leftists engaging in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism theory or as members of local communities dedicated to creating better lives for their Black residents.^[3][2]

The chapter was also facing a leadership crisis, with many of its top names facing charges.

After the split in 1970, Knox and others continued to work under the name of the Black Revolutionary Party (BRP), formed in early 1971.^[2] They continued to work throughout the Midwest and expanded to to international politics as well, once travelling to Quebec to "support the Quebecois in their struggle for self-determination" as described by Knox.^[2] They also communicated with the governments of China and North Korea to attain literature to spread throughout the community for political education, and receieved books from both Chairman Mao and Kim Il Sung.^[2]

The Black Revolutionary Party began to dissolve in 1972 as differing ideologies began to form. As its constituents began to split three ways, into Marxist-Leninists, Pan-Africanists, and Maoists, Knox was unsuccessful in his attempts to unite the party under a single ideology.^[2]

References