[Pnews] New pardon push for Kansas City Black Panther founder Pete O'Neal

[Prisoner News]

*http://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/investigations/new-pardon-push-for-kansas-city-black-panther-founder*

*New pardon push for Kansas City Black Panther founder*

Andy Alcock - April 5, 2016 Video at link above

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - In the east African nation of Tanzania in the shadow 
of Mount Kilimanjaro, you can see zebras and elephants roaming freely.

You can also discover something you might not expect - an American Black 
Panther.

In his 2004 documentary A Panther in Africa, Aaron Matthews tells the 
story of Kansas City Black Panther Party founder Pete O'Neal.

Fifty years ago, the Panthers were formed in California as a militia 
group to protect African-Americans from police. In 1967, they gained 
notoriety when - armed and dressed in their characteristic black berets 
- they marched into the California state capital.

"It started out as self-defense," said Charlotte O'Neal, Pete O'Neal's 
wife. "But then we saw all the things that needed to be addressed."

Shortly after Pete O'Neal formed the Kansas City Panthers, his future 
wife Charlotte O'Neal joined as an 18-year-old.

"After I met him, after I saw the commitment that he had to uplift the 
community, it was over for me," said Charlotte O'Neal. "That's what I 
wanted to do in my life."

That service included feeding hundreds of children breakfast each 
morning. Kansas City's St. Mark's Church, where Charlotte O'Neal spoke 
to 41 Action News, was one of the locations. Other Panther public 
service efforts included a free health clinic, sickle cell anemia 
testing, political education classes and literacy classes.

In 1969, police arrested Pete O'Neal based on a new law for bringing a 
shotgun from Kansas City, Kansas, to Kansas City, Missouri. Even though 
he wasn't found with the weapon, a picture of Pete O'Neal with the 
shotgun in Missouri helped convict him.

A judge sentenced him to four years in federal prison.

"The only reason he was charged with that was because he was the leader 
of the Black Panther Party," Charlotte O'Neal said.

Concerned he might be killed in custody after fellow Panther Fred 
Hampton was killed in Chicago, instead of appealing his case, Pete 
O'Neal and his young wife fled the country.

They ultimately wound up in Tanzania where they've lived since 1972.

"It's no joke being in exile, it isn't," Charlotte O'Neal said.

"I see the way people revere him in Africa," said former Kansas City 
Star reporter Steve Penn. "He's just a great, great, great person."

In his 2012 book, Case for a Pardon, Penn says Pete O'Neal should be 
judged by his whole life, including decades of public service in Africa 
providing food, water, shelter education and transportation to locals 
and visiting Americans.

Pete O'Neal has also adopted 23 Tanzanian children.

"I knew that people would be looking at Pete's case and I knew that in 
order to actually get someone to give him a pardon, you would need to 
tell the whole story, the good, the bad and the ugly," Penn said.

Penn does not shy away from the bad or the ugly in his book. He 
discusses a 1969 riot at Kansas City's Linwood Methodist Church the 
Panthers started after their demands of the all-white church to serve 
blacks in the urban core where the church was located were unmet.

Penn also writes about a hateful article in the Panthers national 
newspaper after the fatal shooting of Kansas City off-duty police 
Officer Edward Dacy, who was trying to stop a robbery. The article, 
written by the Kansas City Panther chapter, featured a picture of Dacy 
lying on a stretcher outside the store where he was shot with the 
caption, "Kansas City Fascist Pig Performing His Final Duty." Pete 
O'Neal has since apologized for the article.

Penn also writes about Pete O'Neal's national interview on ABC News 
discussing an investigation of the Panthers chaired by Missouri Rep. 
Richard Ichord.

"I would like very much to shoot my way into the House of 
Representatives and take the racist, lying Ichord's head," Pete O'Neal 
told the interviewer in January 1970.

"If that's how I felt then, it's not a reflection of how I feel now," 
Pete O'Neal said in 2004 in A Panther in Africa.

"I don't want anybody to believe that I think Pete was some kind of 
saint," said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II. "Pete made mistakes, most of them 
were big verbal mistakes," he said.

Cleaver, who is a third cousin to Pete O'Neal, has been trying to get 
him a pardon for 25 years dating back to Cleaver's days as Kansas City 
mayor. He''s now petitioning the outgoing Obama administration.

"This is a non-violent man at age 75, who's done remarkable things, even 
in Tanzania, for Americans," said Cleaver. "This is it, President Obama 
is the last chance," he said.

"I would love for it to happen," said Charlotte O'Neal. "I represent 
him, but it would be better if he could come and represent himself."

Pete O'Neal has made it clear his life is now in Tanzania. But he'd like 
to come and visit family, including his 95-year-old mother, Florene, 
who's now in a Kansas City nursing home. He'd also like to see children 
from his first marriage he hasn't seen in more than 40 years.

There's no timetable or guarantee the Obama administration will take up 
his case.


-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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