Elaine Brown, the only woman to head the Black Panther Party, became chairman when Huey P. Newton fled to Cuba to avoid jail in 1974. The Party shocked the nation with its advocacy of self-defense and images of defiant young Black men and women in black leather jackets carrying rifles. What is less known — and perhaps what made FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover deem the Party “the greatest threat” to national security — was its uniting of poor White, Latino, Asian American and Native American organizations in an anti-racist and anti-capitalist coalition, and its affiliations with international “revolutionary” organizations.
Brown, like many former Panthers, has continued her political activism. Her books include A Taste of Power and The Condemnation of Little B. She is currently co-authoring, with Karima Al-Amin, For Reasons of Race and Belief: The Trials of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown), a biography of the iconic ’60s revolutionary who is currently serving a life sentence for murder in a supermax prison, where he is held in solitary confinement, according to his wife. The Root spoke with Brown about the gun-control debate and her advocacy for the people she deems as American political prisoners — including Michael “Little B” Lewis, a man sentenced to life in prison at age 14 for a murder Brown says he did not commit.
The Root: The debate over gun control is gripping the nation, fueled by the Newtown, Conn., tragedy and the bully pulpit of President Obama. How do you see gun control and the impact on the Black community?
Elaine Brown: The position of the Black Panther Party was that Black people live in communities occupied by police forces that are armed and dangerous and represent the frontline of forces keeping us oppressed. We did not promote guns, but rather, the right to defend ourselves against a state that was oppressing us — with guns. There were innumerable incidents in which police agents kicked in our doors or shot our brothers and sisters in what we called red-light trials, where the policeman was the judge, the jury and the executioner. We called for an immediate end to this brutality, and advocated for our right to self-defense. Today, the brutal police murders of Sean Bell in New York and Oscar Grant in Oakland are just two examples of how little has changed.
