Saturday, April 16, 2011
Oakland Honors Slain Black Panther Lil' Bobby Hutton
Oakland Honors
Lil' Bobby Hutton
Lil' Bobby Hutton
The people of Oakland honored Lil' Bobby Hutton today at the West Oakland Library. Members of his family,Black Panther Party members and radical associates in the black liberation movement gave honor and respect to the first member to join the BPP, who was murdered after he surrendered to the OPD following a shootout in which Warren Wells and Eldridge Cleaver were wounded. With his chest bare and hands upraised, the OPD commanded Lil' Bobby to run to a police vehicle, but when he did as ordered they mowed him down like he was a vicious dog. Community residents yelled in horror at the cold blooded murder under the color of law.
An officer came up to Eldridge Cleaver and asked him where was he wounded? When Eldridge said in his leg, the officer put his boot in the wound! Other Panthers had scattered. David Hilliard was pulled from beneath a woman's bed in the house where he had fled.
The Saturday gathering was in honor of Lil' Bobby, the valiant teenager, a man child in the promised land, who gave his life to black liberation. He joined the Panthers at 15, after he was kicked out of school, yet after joining the BPP, in the tradition of Huey Newton, Lil' Bobby taught himself how to read. In David Hilliard's book HUEY, he says of Lil' Bobby, "...Lil' Bobby grew up fast, poor, but with a thirst for knowledge. After he was kicked out of school, he'd come around to Seale's house to talk and learn to read." He became the BPP's first treasurer.
Bobby Hutton's niece MC'd the event. His nephew was also in the house. Speakers included BPP Minister of Culture Emory Douglas, just back from a tour of Portugal's African community. He briefly described Lil' Bobby as a teenager who liked to be goofy but when it came to revolution, he was dead serious and disciplined.
When I addressed the audience, I concurred with Emory who had told how he met Lil Bobby at the Black House in San Francisco, the political/cultural center Eldridge Cleaver, Ed Bullins, Ethna Wyatt and I founded in 1967.
I had to tell of the incident I had with Lil Bobby over the youth club in the basement. The youth were out of control, ditching school and taking liberties with girls. We were informed of a possible police raid due to the youth, so Huey had sent Bobby to tell me to close down the clubhouse (by this time I had introduced Eldridge to Huey and Bobby; he immediately joined the BPP and Black House would soon become the San Francisco headquarters of the BPP).
I rejected Huey's directive and told Bobby to F... the Supreme Commander. Little Bobby wanted to get me, I could see it in his eyes, the seriousness of demeanor. He wanted to get me but kept his cool. He knew Huey and I had a special relationship, having come into consciousness together at Merritt College, along with Bobby Seale and others.
But in hindsight, I was wrong because the youth did present a danger, an opportunity for the police to raid Black House. And after all, Lil' Bobby was only following orders. He was a true trooper. I was suffering from an over identification with the youth, ignoring the seriousness of the revolutionary situation.
Bobby is a model for youth of today who are lost and turned out on the way to grandmother's house! I told the audience Lil' Bobby had a high sense of discipline so needed by youth of today.
We are in a war zone yet our children walk around like we are in La La Land,with pants sagging off their behinds. How can we fight a battle with pants sagging, we can't run, we can't fight.
I asked where is the book about Lil' Bobby? There's a plethora of books on the Black Panthers, but where is Bobby's book? Must I write it, I asked? I've written about Eldridge (My Friend the Devil,memoir, 2009), and I've written about Huey (play, One Day in the Life and Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam, 1990). If you force me to write it, you know I will. Lil Bobby's niece said she is working on it, so I told her later I would help her if she needs me.
Other radicals who spoke included JR from the San Francisco Bayview and Brother Timothy from the Laney College BSU, also a sister from All of Us or None, a group fighting against discrimination that prisoners, felons and family members face dealing with the Department of Corrections and upon release of inmates. Panther Terry Cotton spoke, although he was in prison at the time of the assassination of Lil Bobby.
Also present was Sundiata (Willie Tate) of the San Quentin Six, who was imprisoned with George Jackson, messiah of the Prison Movement that had begun around the time the staff of Black Dialogue Magazine visited the Soledad Prison Black Culture Club chaired by Eldridge Cleaver and Alprentis Bunchy Carter, 1966.
Black Dialogue Editors who visited
Soledad Prison Black Culture Club,
1966
Lil' Bobby Hutton was assassinated two days after the April 4th assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr. There is some dispute whether the shootout was planned or not. Some say there was discussion in the ranks over what action to take in light of the MLK, Jr. assassination.
Eldridge Cleaver told this writer a group of clean shaven men came to Panther headquarters begging for guns after King was killed. He said they had the US Army look but were in civilian clothing. If true, it sounds like Cointelpro was working, i.e., the FBI's counter intelligence program to disrupt the black liberation movement.
The fact that Black America exploded from coast to coast with rebellion was not enough, the provocateurs wanted more and more. They didn't care if America burned, just put those niggers back in their place. They'd had enough of Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, including Malcolm X, and all points in between.
King's speech at Riverside Church was enough for the USA to dispense with him, after all he had gone international, beyond the paradigm of Negro intellectualism or political philosophy.
The event was also a birthday party for Lil Bobby would have been 17 a few days after he was killed by the OPD. After a poetry reading by Tureada Mikell, brother Rashid and a short reading by myself from Eldridge Cleaver's account of the incident that appears in the just released anthology Black California, we sang happy birthday Lil Bobby and enjoyed a beautiful chocolate cake decorated with a black panther.
--Marvin X, Prime Minister of Poetry, First Poet's Church of the Latter Day Egyptian Revisionists
www.firstpoetschurch.blogspot.com
https://theblacklist.net/
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