[News] Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Forty Years On

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Forty Years On
by Ron Jacobs

April 4, 1968 was the day when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in 
Memphis, Tennessee.  He had been working with the Memphis sanitation 
workers in their struggle for better working conditions and a 
union.  The night before his assassination, he gave 
<http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm>his 
speech that ended with the words "But I want you to know tonight, 
that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.  And I'm happy, 
tonight.  I'm not worried about anything.  I'm not fearing any 
man.  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."  The 
next day he was gunned down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel by 
either James Earl Ray and/or persons unknown.  Although I am one of 
those who sincerely doubts Ray's supposed role in the murder, that is 
not the purpose of my writing.  We will probably never know for 
certain exactly who conspired to kill Dr. King.  We do know whose 
interests were served by his murder.  Many of those same elements of 
US political and economic society that were served by King's murder 
continue to be responsible for much of what goes on in those arenas 
to this day.

No, my purpose writing today is to talk about another political 
murder that occurred two days after Dr. King's.  This murder happened 
across the country in the city of Oakland, California and we know who 
the murderers were.  The murdered man (a young man of 17, in fact) 
was Bobby Hutton and the murderers were members of the Oakland Police 
Department.  Bobby was the first person to join the Black Panther 
Party after it was formed by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966.  In 
a rather bitter twist his murder was also the first murder by law 
enforcement of a member of the Black Panther Party.  By the time the 
Party had disappeared from the political landscape, more than thirty 
members had been killed by various law enforcement agencies.  As I 
write, the government continues its vendetta against former Party 
members in its attempt to murder 
<http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20080402__Mumia_Exception_s__ugly_head_again.html>Mumia 
Abu Jamal in Pennsylvania and in its prosecution of the San 
<http://www.freethesf8.org/>Francisco 8, to name but two of the 
better known cases involving party members that are still 
ongoing.  In addition, several former party members languish in 
prisons around the country -- many for crimes they did not commit.

The story of Hutton's murder is essentially this.  After Dr. King's 
murder, dozens of cities and towns with large black populations 
across the United States erupted in what can best be termed as a 
rebellion.  Police departments were quickly overwhelmed and National 
Guard and regular Army troops were called in to enforce order and 
protect property.  One of the few such cities that experienced very 
little civil unrest was Oakland, CA.  Although the police would not 
admit it, much of this was due to the role the Black Panther Party 
played in keeping the lid on things, arguing with angry 
African-Americans intent on raising hell that any type of 
insurrectionary activity would provide the notoriously racist Oakland 
police with an excuse to kill as many black folks as they 
wanted.  The Panthers spent much of the first forty-eight hours after 
King's murder diffusing potentially riotous situations throughout the 
Oakland neighborhoods where they were respected and known.

In circumstances that remain contested to this day, Hutton was 
murdered either after he left a basement where he and Eldridge 
Cleaver had hidden following an armed confrontation between the 
police and some Panthers who were pulled over by police in East 
Oakland or after he was taken into custody.  Either way, he was 
unarmed.  As Cleaver told Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in an interview that 
appears on the PBS show 
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/interviews/ecleaver.html>Frontline, 
he was told by one of the arresting officers who was at the scene in 
Oakland on April 6, 1968:

So I was pulling the trigger to blow your head off, and something 
told me not to do it."  I  (Cleaver) said, "praise the Lord."  He 
said, "praise the Lord."  He told me, "I am no longer a police 
officer."  He said, "I have my own private security firm now."  He 
said, "the reason that they have not been rushing you (Cleaver) to 
court is because of my testimony and the testimony of 13 other police 
officers who were there that night who do not agree with what the 
police did in the way they killed Bobby Hutton."  He said, "they 
murdered Bobby (Hutton).  They murdered my prisoner."

This information was relayed to Cleaver after he returned from exile 
and was awaiting trial on charges related to that April 1968 night.

Other versions of that night claim that two carloads of Panthers were 
ambushed by Oakland police.  In the chaos that followed the ambush, 
Cleaver and Hutton escaped and hid in a basement nearby.  After a 
period of time, Hutton and Cleaver surrendered and Hutton left the 
building first, unarmed and without a shirt.  He was then shot down 
in cold blood.  Either way the story is told, the fact remains that 
Hutton was murdered by the police.

The murders of King and Hutton within two days of each other 
convinced many people living in the United States that forces within 
the US government were intent on destroying the popular struggle 
against racism and war by any means necessary.  The historical 
evidence since that bloody weekend forty years ago suggests that 
those forces were more successful than not.  Despite the current 
campaign by Barack Obama for president, the vast majority of US 
residents of color are not faring that much better than they were in 
1968.  Legal apartheid no longer exists and attitudes towards race 
have progressed, but the economic facts of much of non-white America 
are appallingly similar to what they were forty years 
ago.  Furthermore, the statistics regarding the imprisonment of black 
and Latino men in the United States provide concrete evidence that 
the mechanics of racial oppression still operate in this 
country.  The criminal justice system continues to be the means by 
which the predominantly white and essentially racist power structure 
maintains its control over those who are poor and whose skin is 
darker in hue.  Like I noted above, many of the same elements of US 
political and economic society that were served by the murder of Dr. 
King and the destruction of the Black Panther Party continue to be 
responsible for much of what goes on in those arenas to this day.  No 
matter how one tries to portray the past forty years of this aspect 
of US history, it is clear that we have not reached the promised land.

----------
Ron Jacobs is author of 
<http://books.google.com/books?id=SD2TvqDh8EkC>The Way the Wind Blew: 
A History of the Weather Underground (republished by Verso). His 
first novel, 
<http://www.amazon.com/Short-Order-Frame-Ron-Jacobs/dp/0977459098>Short 
Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at 
<<mailto:rjacobs3625 at charter.net>rjacobs3625 at charter.net>.




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