De-Colonize

USA. California. Oakland. March 31, 1972. Black Panther Central Committee Member Ericka Huggins laughs after a Black Community Survival Conference rally. Ericka is the widow of slain Panther John Huggins. She later headed the New Haven branch of the party.

Early in the course of the trial, Black Panther Party activist Bobby Seale was denied his constitutional right to counsel of his choice and was thereafter illegally denied his right to defend himself.  Seale requested that the trial be postponed so that his attorney Charles Garry could represent him (as Garry was about to undergo gallbladder surgery). The Judge denied the postponement, and refused to allow Seale to represent himself. Seale vehemently protested the Judge’s illegal and unconstitutional actions, and argued that the Judge’s actions were not only illegal, but also racist. The Judge in turn accused Seale of disrupting the court, and on October 29, Judge Hoffman ordered Bobby Seale to be bound, gagged, and chained to a chair.  For several days Seale appeared in court bound and gagged before the jury, struggling to get free and managing to make muffled sounds. 

USA. California. Berkeley. 1971. Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton hugs Central Committee member Elaine Brown at his house shortly after his release from prison on August 5, 1970. Brown later became chairman of the Panthers.

US Empire on the Ropes

by Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford

We are witnessing “the beginning of the end of a world order that was hatched after World War Two,” said Duboisian scholar