Part One: The Black Panthers & Breakfast

Margaret talks with Joelle Monique about how a few thousand Black radicals scared the government by feeding kids, building coalitions, and organizing armed community defense.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
You're a weekly podcast that reminds you that there's people
who become cool by doing cool stuff. I think that
people get the direction of it mixed up. It's not
that people are cool, so then they do cool stuff.
People become cool by doing cool stuff. That's that sounds
very dramatic because I have something in the back of

(00:22):
my throat.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Are you saying actions matter?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yes? Cool? Yeah, it matters less what you believe in
more what you do cool. But what I have done
is have Joelle Monique on.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
What's up?

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Ooray?

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Oh man, I am here. I've been trying new things
and they're going well. I'm probably the most hydrated and
well rested i've been in my adult life. So you know,
happy things.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah. Your water bottle looks awesome. By the way, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
I got it for free. It is to drink my
daily recommended amount of water. I call it my emotional
support water bottle. It is cleaned once a week.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
I mean consistency. Love love to see it.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, yeah, well I do. The rest of the intro
credits the other voice. Oh yeah, Sophie, Sophie.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
That's me. I am not well rested or hydrated.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
But I'm also here. Yes, I got really excited yesterday
I got these I've been hiking and so I got
these like fancy electrolyte mixes that are not but I
tried it while I wasn't hiking yesterday and it's like
the saltiest, craziest fucking thing. I don't know how I
feel about it.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
It's like when you drink a gatorade you absolutely don't
need one. You're like, what is It's like sugary sweet
but also kind of salty, and your body is like,
we don't need it. It's too much.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
It's just like, let's get through you as as quickly
as possible.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
That's one leftover gatory that you had when you were
like sick, and then you drink it and when you're
not sick and you're like, this is not it.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
I did not want this.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Oh I like this intro. Wait, we have to do
the rest of it.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Well, okay. So Ian is our audio engineer, and our
theme music was written for us by someone who is
actually I was gonna say someone who's not a woman,
but she actually is a woman, but her name is
on woman. Yeah, that's who that's who.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
You just confuse this shit out of everybody.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
And that's okay, I know, I know, but I'm going
to confuse everyone every even more. Joelle, you ever heard
of breakfast?

Speaker 3 (02:39):
I fucking love breakfast.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Hell yeah, the day it's best.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
It's like, it's so goddamn good. And I have lots
of thoughts on breakfast randomly. Oh listen, you don't know
what you just got yourself.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Okay, Today we're going to tell a story about breakfast,
about why it's important, especially to students. Are cool people
today took a long, hard look at what was standing
in the way of access to healthy breakfast for their community,
and they did something about it directly, feeding tens of
thousands of kids every day. I could see Joelle's face.
I know it is. And of course what was standing

(03:19):
in the way of these kids having a healthy breakfast
were those classic problems capitalism and racism. Because today we're
going to talk about the Black Panther Party and we're
going to talk about their survival programs, the most famous
of which is their free breakfast program and how this
pressured the US government into forcing into feeding free breakfast

(03:42):
to kids.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
But a great organization, Yeah, love us some black panthers. Yeah,
elite radicals.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
They h well, I want to hear somebody. Well, I'm
going to do I actually wrote up a bunch about
breakfast so we can talk about Yes, So there's a
slogan breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
I was like googling it and I was like, is
this true, and a not deep dives into the subject
tells me that it was a marketing slogan developed by

(04:12):
John Harvey Kellogg in order to move breakfast Cereal, that
demon that I know, Yeah, fucker, you want to know
more about him. There's a whole opposite of Cool People
episode about him from behind the Bastards. So then people
on the internet were like, see, since that's marketing slogan,
breakfast doesn't matter, we can all skip it. This is
not true. There's been a ton of studies and I

(04:36):
don't know how compares to lunch or dinner. So I'm
not gonna be like most important meal of the day,
but it is one of the important meals of the day.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
There are three.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, this is It's a pretty classic setup. Not going
for a long time. Skipping breakfast fucks with your circadian rhythm.
It increases your risk of heart disease, type tube diabetes,
and a bunch of other shit. But most important to
our what used to be anecdotal and is now preliminarily
proven eating breakfast provides short term cognition and memory benefits.

(05:09):
So if you eat a healthy breakfast, you do better
in school. There's noticeable, like trackable changes improvements in math, spelling, reading, attention,
and memory, as well as reduced frustration, increased attention. Kids
aren't falling asleep in class as much. So I hate
to say Kellogg was right, was wrong.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
He was on He knew two things that you need
breakfast and that masturbation leads to evil. Yeah he was
right about one.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Yeah, you take what you can get. No, no, yeah,
he would be.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
So disappointed with our serial selections. He made to be
able to be the most bland thing. And then people
were like, that is not it. What if we just
made it out of sugar and corn. Sugar and corn,
everybody go for it, And now the cereal is just
diabetes waiting to happen. It is a crazy wonderful trip.
If you have you gone back down the cereal aisle recently,
do you eat cereal for breakfast.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
I do. I eat cereal for breakfast, and I like,
I usually pick. I have like a really not impressive
grocery store available to me in West Virginia, and so
I pick the like least the like least sugary, but
still like a major brand thing that I can find,
you know.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
Okay, okay, are we talking like a great nuts?

Speaker 1 (06:33):
I usually eat like Life or Crispecs.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Okay, all right, classics.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Classics, Yeah, what about you.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
I don't eat cereal for breakfast anymore. I was becoming
in eggs and toast girl when I do the calculations
on the calories and I said, my god, it's so delicious.
It's such a classic breakfast. I didn't realize I needed
to be a farmer working in a field all day
to eat it. It's really annoying because it's so fucking good.
So now I do, uh either have like fresh fruit

(07:05):
or I'll do like a green smoothie.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
But before I became the person I am today, I
was just a stoner who was poor, and oh my god,
cereal is so great because you could eat it for
any meal. It's also like five dollars max, right, Or
it was when I was buying cereal. I don't know
what the prices are now, but so if you accidentally
ate too much, you were like, not a big deal.

(07:28):
Now I'm gonna go buy no.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Dollar box c Cereal is actually like a gluten free
as well, which is good for people who can't eat gluten.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, absolutely nice. Love that I think of cereal as
a dessert.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
So where I was going was, oh, Oreos is my
supreme cereal.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
I've never heard of this.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Oh my, Margaret, it is so divine.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
It's like it's just like eating ice cream for breakfast.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
I scared myself healthier.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
One time when I had no money, but I had
these leftover cakes from a like event that no one
came to. It was a very not happy period of
my life. I like didn't have enough money for food,
but I like through this like anniversary event for this
publisher I worked with, and like no one came, and
so I had these two fucking cakes. And I had
a science experiment called how many consecutive meals can I

(08:25):
replace with cake? Oh no, Margaret, the answer was five.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
That is you know about that? That feels right? I
bet at four you were you were like, this fifth
meal is probably a bad eye. Yeah, yeah, but I
absolutely must. When I was in a very similar situation,
I was living in a two bedroom with at one
point thirteen people. It was a lovely, wild experience in
the early twenties. Many of them were, you know, like

(08:52):
sex workers, punks. I worked at a pizza place.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yeah, so you bring home the pizza and everyone loves
you every night.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
And it was the best. It was taken baysic organic,
taking baked pizza.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
It was like the nicest things together.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Okay, okay, Marker, Honestly, it was right. It was just
queer Kans as far as I could see, all of
us poor. We got one guy's dad who was a
sweet old farmer who did not understand his gay son
but loved him regardless. And he was like, yes, I
will sign this lease with these two kids you met
from in college six months ago. How did it happen,
I don't know, but it was magical. It was a

(09:24):
great apartment while it lasted. But yeah, we would like
make pizzas at night. Someone would get a handle of
vodka because it costs nineteen ninety nine and we could
definitely get that much money together.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, and then we would always money for vodka.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
The definitely was always ready for vodka. It's cold in
the Midwest, and this morning we would eat left over
cold pizza. And it's also a great breakfast.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
It truly is. I think that the breakfast we're going
to talk about are going to be healthier than what
you and I have. Just so glad.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
But you mentioned children needing to be educated, so I'm
glad that they're brea.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah. So, if there's one thing that black activists have
learned over the centuries in the US, it's that learning
and education can be weapons in the fight against racism
if they're wielded intentionally and not just part of recuperation
into the existing system. Right, And we see that again
and again, which is to say, sometimes people look at

(10:23):
the survival programs of the Black Panther Party and they
write them off as like sort of charity or propaganda,
kind of like a like a side thing to make
them puzzles popular, compared to the real work of running
around with guns but providing food for black children, preparing
them for education that they could wield the better themselves
in their community, empower people to confront capitalism directly. It

(10:45):
also took an armed militant movement to set up that infrastructure,
so I don't want to. I mostly get mad at
the fake people keep trying to come up with these
dichotomies where they're like, oh, you're either like down with
the militant struggle or you're like doing charity or whatever.
It's like it took one to make the other happen.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yes, yeah, they're completely merged you. The last month on
he recommended such a lovely book that I have cherished
called this Nonviolent Shit Will Get You Killed, Yeah, which
is everything to me, and it's been because it's definitely
you're kind of taught. I mean especially I don't know
what children are taught in schools now, but growing up

(11:25):
in like the early aughts, specifically during Black History Months,
when you got to learn about Martin Luther King Junior
and what he was doing and Malcolm X and the
bad shit he was doing. Yeah, they're like that guy
was dangerous and that's definitely how you don't want to
do it. This guy literally loved the Lord and that
is why we like him every and when he died,
everyone thought he was a Saintan's so great, Like really,

(11:47):
what this was? The lesson I learned from like zero
to twenty two. It was crazy how long that narrative
was dictated to me. And you really, or at least
I'll speak for myself, I really felt like, Okay, if
you are non violent for a long enough, attitudes will change.
And especially you know, in the nineties you've got Bill Clinton,
who people used to very seriously say it was the

(12:09):
first black president, a mind blowing time. Yeah, but they
like the thought was, well, we're doing a lot better
because of the non violent stuff. But of course that
completely ignored the drug war that was happening. It ignored
the censorship that was happening across a lot of black arts,
but very specifically rap. It was a crazy time where
people were constantly lying to us. And it's interesting now

(12:32):
I sort of can't shake knowing what I know. Violence
is necessary. It's not corded, it's not invited, but it
is necessary to defend ourselves because you know, if we
look at the two heroes we started with, both ended
up dead. Didn't matter how peaceful or you know, prepared

(12:54):
they were to incite violence if necessary, they were both murdered.
And so yeah, to your point, you eat both.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, and like and there's a lot of and this
gets into something that I'm a little bit just going
from what I've heard people talking about. It's not part
of the script, but like there's a lot of talk
about how as Martin Luther King became more and more
like aware and in connection with militant movements, and Malcolm
X was also moving like more towards in some ways

(13:22):
a moderate position, not an unarmed position, but a like
he moved away from the Nation of Islam and towards
actual Islam, and like you know, and he's he stopped
being as explicitly whatever anyway. So this is possibly also
why they like had to die, right, is because this
stopped being a dichotomy to some degree. This is a
little bit off the cuff. There's probably people who know

(13:43):
more about that, but.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
No, no, but you're one hundred percent right. I mean,
I'm not a scholar in it either. But if you
look at some of the especially the very late like
MLK days, Like there's a video where he's walking through
the streets of Chicago and he's struck as a dude
from the South about how sag he called Chicago the
most segregated city in America, and it was and in

(14:04):
many ways still is. And while he's walking through, a
bunch of white people come out the start throwing things
at him, and you can I mean, he's he's like enraged,
he's so angry. This is like he's been fighting for
so long, he's been peacefuls for so long, and you
can't help but understand, like, my god, it's not working.
It's the vibe you get, you know, like it is

(14:24):
just peacely marching is not going to change these people's minds.
And yeah, they didn't let either of them get to
start vocalizing that very much where they were taken out.
It's just crazy.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, well that that goes well into well, go okay
to talk about panthers really quick. So you know, the panthers,
they're about both of these things, right, They're about the
survival programs and they're about militancy. And it took what
might have been the largest coordinated effort of law enforcement, federal, state,

(14:55):
and local in the history of the United States to
bring them down. It took infiltrators, it took dirty tricks.
It took rumor mills and slander and libel and drugs
and frame ups and police violence and outright assassination to
stop them. There's also, and we're gonna talk about this
kind of near the end, there's a bit of a
like they forgot to throw the ring of power into
the fires of Mount Doom. Stuff going on that plagues them.

(15:20):
But they got so much done along the way that
even though they did end up repressed successfully, it was
cool as shit. They didn't appear whole cloth out of
nowhere to vitalize the civil rights movement as in my scripts.
Now we're going to talk about some of the things
that you were just talking about, but you know, there

(15:42):
were armed components of the non violence civil rights movement
in the US South. For anyone who hasn't heard, I
would recommend listening to me and Joel talking about this
last fall. But nonviolence is a tactical choice that lots
of people made in the fifties and early sixties. For
some people is a moral choice, but not all of them.
And there was movement after movement that paired voter registration
and busting a great with armed self and community defense.

(16:02):
The Deacons for Defense and Justice of Jonesborough, Louisiana a
particularly prominent example of this. Then, just to lay out
where the Panthers are coming from. In around nineteen sixty six,
the era of civil rights moves into the era of
black power. The clearest turning point might have been on
June sixteenth, nineteen sixty six, when Stokely Carmichael, who is

(16:23):
an organizer with SNICK, the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee,
he gave a speech that included the following bit, this
is the twenty seventh time I have been arrested, and
I ain't going to jail no more. The only way
we're going to stop them white men from whooping us
is to take over. What we're going to start saying
now is black power. And black power is another one
of those things that like the way it gets talked

(16:45):
about in mainstream education, at least my education, was not
a useful way to talk about black power. All black
power means a lot of different things, depending on who
says it and what the context they're saying it in,
but the core of it is self determination for black people.
At its more extreme end, it's been used to advocate
for black separatism or black supremacy. I don't want to

(17:07):
conflate the two. Those are different ideas. Right at its
least radical end, it's been used to advocate for like
black control of existing infrastructure, like what if we had
all black mayors and black cops and stuff like that. Right,
most people, at least in my reading, didn't mean either
end of this. The Panthers had a saying all power
to the people, and they specifically meant that interracially and

(17:32):
black self determination wasn't going to come at the expense
of non black people. And that's like the the thing
that I keep running across, like as I read this
and then I think back to my own own childhood
and being told certain things or whatever. Right is that,
like it wasn't black power means, like, I don't know,
kill all the white people or whatever.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
Right, it may not the equivalent of the white power
that the KKK does now.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah, exactly. And an awful lot of the civil rights
leaders and organizations that we usually think about is not
particularly militant, came along with this transition into the black
power movement. And this is another part that sort of
gets forget about it. I went to a I went
to a middle school called Rosa Parks, Okay in this

(18:17):
and my neighborhood was actually like bust to integrate this
school because it was a rich, upper middle class white neighborhood.
And I mean, I'm I'm a white middle class kid.
I'm not that's how anyway, whatever, I hear you.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
And I'm not surprised.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, And what we learned about Rosa Parks, at least
what I remember learning about Rosa Parks in the middle
school named after her, was she was a nice lady
who didn't give up her seat.

Speaker 3 (18:45):
Yes, that's what I learned too, and always old like
the there's a level of feebleness and a respect that
white people could understand because you would not do this
to an old white lady. And a lot of times
I think when I use white is a very pejorative term.
But like if we if we look at I think

(19:07):
when they think about black liberation, right, because that that's
typically the goal is just liberation, They're like, oh, it
will it can only be radical, and if it's radical,
it must be violent to me, because if our powers
are equal, then the lack of power should also be equal.

(19:29):
I really think that's the through line for a lot
of folks. Yeah, And therefore they can only they can
only give liberation to the folks that they have given
some form of liberation to right. So Granny's grannies are fine,
they can ride the bus.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
There was a kindergarten teacher at my elementary school who
was friends with Rosa Parks and some kid was like.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
She's not dead. What did they say?

Speaker 4 (19:55):
They're like, she's not dead? Because wow, she was like
she was ancient, ancient. I went to Rosa Parks Middle
School while Rosa Parks was alive, and I did not
know that Rosa Parks wasn't a live person exactly.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
That is insane, that's crazy.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Yeah, what people don't mention is I mean one and
I kind of maybe one day so I'll actually get
her own episode because she's really fucking cool, including the
bus thing. And it was a like conscious strategic thing,
kind of like how people are like, oh John Brown
was like a lone wing now to attack things. He's like, No,
he was part of a major movement to try and

(20:36):
accomplish a certain thing and he actually succeeded.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
But how blown was your mind when you learned Rosa
Parks was part of a movement? Yeah, I active part
and an amazing human being. Yeah, I was like, why,
well we didn't this story from us? And why?

Speaker 1 (20:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (20:50):
Mine my mind was blown. Oh man, diving into black
history as well? You're like, whoa I have? I recommend
them at the end. I have two books on slave rebellions.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
Cool.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
I got things because yeah, you know, people are always like, oh,
you didn't fight your oh, like our liberation was all peaceful,
and I was like, we've been fighting the whole time.
They just keep burying these stories.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Have you heard a fucking Nat Turner? Like right, I
mean yeah, And he's the most famous of them. He's like,
actually the only name I know off the top of
my head. Right, but there was like so many of them.
And then I have this book that I haven't read
yet because I haven't done this episode on yet. But
there's a whole like book about women leading slaver vaults.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Yeah wait is it wake?

Speaker 1 (21:32):
I'm not sure. I have a lot of history books
on my shelf. We'll talk about it, okay.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
So people missed the parts where Rosa Parks saw Malcolm
X as her personal hero. She critiqued gradualism, like the
like let's slowly make everything better. She worked alongside organizations
with names like League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and she
supported the Black Panthers and Angela Davis, And that's besides
the point. Rosa Parks was cool. But yeah, by the

(21:59):
by the mid nineteen sixties, the civil rights movement was
taking on a new character, a more revolutionary character. All
the asking politely wasn't working. Frankly, people weren't asking for
like half what they needed in the first place. And
basically people were like, what if we just lay out
our vision for a better world on the table and
then fight to bring that into being, which is not
only the only way you can actually make of you

(22:21):
can actually achieve your true goal. It's also a really
incredible way to get reforms is to fight for more
than what they'll in the end give you.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
You know, of course every negotiation you will lead disappointed.
You can't start it where you want to end. This
is just a good business tip. It's the best tip
I ever got. Whatever you think you're owed, asked like,
you could double it potentially, but just ask for way more.
You'll be surprised where you end up it all he thought, totally.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
And so the other thing that you know, we talked
about this with Martin Luther Kinglin. Moment the movement was
coming from the rural South into cities across the US,
and you've got what's called them Great Migration, which is
split into two waves, when black people left the South
in great numbers. For most of the US's history, about
ninety percent of all black people lived in the US South,

(23:12):
with about eighty percent of them living rurally. It wasn't
until nineteen ten that the Great Migration started, basically as
a result of Jim Crow laws, right as reconstruction was
destroyed by racists, and so people who were pissed off
about Jim Crow laws and lynchings and the general just
some franchise franchisement were like, all we're gonna get the
fuck out of here. We're not getting our forty acres

(23:35):
and two mules that we were promised. And the first
wave was huge, but it was actually the smaller of
the two waves. And millions of Black Americans moved to
mostly the mid Atlantic in the Northeast in this first migration.
Others actually moved within the South into cities. But if
you want to move into a city, you should put

(23:55):
all of your money into gold. Is that what we're advertising.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
The transition? To me? I was like, is this a
thing that the people to have never heard? Of this.
It's hilarious.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Whatever it is we're advertising is clearly individually vetted by
me and signed off by Joelle and Sophie, and not
just a system by which we are able to continue
to eat food and feed our dogs by selling advertising space.

(24:27):
So you're sad.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
Joy.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
And we're back, okay. So that's the first wave of
the Great migration. Then you go World War Two, the
big war that happened when the US was like, we're
off to go smash racism. Just kidding, We're still segregated,
and like, you know, you're the segregated arm Anyway. We've
talked about that a couple times in the show, about
people being like fucking mad at the blatant hypocrisy. So

(24:54):
during World War Two you get the start of the
second wave. Skilled black workers moved to the West coast
into the north to work in military things, building airplanes
and shit. Between nineteen forty and nineteen seventy, the US's
black population went from rural to urban and down to
only about fifty three percent of folks living in the
South and forty seven percent now live elsewhere in the country.

(25:16):
This is a bigger migration of people than all of
the ones that white people talk about, like the Irish
and Italian migrations to the States, which were huge. Right now,
was a big I mean, that's how I ended up here,
right will part of me whatever. But it's not nearly
so massive as the Great Migration, and it's not in
some ways as culturally important.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
It's it's the speed at which it happened and the
impact that has left on our culture is so interesting.
I feel like because both my parents' grandparents, yes, both
my parents' grandparents came up during the Great Migration. My
mom's family from Texas to Chicago, my dad's family from
Mississippi and Alabama up to Chicago. But because of that,

(26:03):
they were all raised by very Southern grandparents. And that's
back in the day when we have both generational families.
It's I think a reason that there remains such a
homogeny to Black culture across because you know, every Black culture,
if you look at different pockets are crossing, they're different,
but there's like a lot of homogenized threads through us.

(26:25):
And I think it's because migration happened so quickly that we,
you know, certain things just linger. And I think there's
like a lot of quote the traditional Southern ethics, styles
of living, ways of rearing children that remain within black
culture no matter where you live in the United States.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
That makes sense. Yeah, okay, So there's a weird coincidence
that happened at the same time as black people were
moving into cities, just purely by happenstance, all the white
people moved out to the suburbs.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
Oh, just because they were just you know.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yeah, it happened in what's called white flight and is
I don't know if there's lots of bad stuff there.
I don't know enough heroes to do an episode about that,
and like redlining and all that shit. I'm sure those
people fought against it. Maybe one day we'll cover it.
But anyway, so it turns out not just white people

(27:22):
in the South were racist, but white people all over
the country were racist. It is shocking to everyone who's listening.
I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
So.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
And it's the migrants and their children from the Great
Migration who bring us the black panthers starting in Oakland, California.
And that's why the Great Migration matters this story. And
they brought with them some rural values like armed self defense.
There's another place that a lot of the Panthers came from.

(27:52):
And that's the US military. Take for example I want
to use. I've been reading a bunch of books this week,
and one of my favorite people is a man named
Quasi Ballagoon, who is cool as shit, and I want
to talk about him for a minute because he's so cool.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
Please do what a name a classic?

Speaker 1 (28:11):
I know, I think Balagoon is Yoruba, and I can't remember.
I didn't. I didn't write down the origin or the
other of quasi Quasy. So Ballagoon grew up in Maryland,
where the civil rights movement wasn't so entirely committed to nonviolence.
It's actually a thing that I didn't know about by
that when we did the last episode on this. But
the Cambridge Riot of nineteen sixty three was where people

(28:34):
protesting segregation were routinely arrested and mistreated racists. The riot
here is white people being awful. They were setting black
businesses on fire and trying to like at one point,
they like drove a car into a black neighborhood and
so start shooting, but then they all had to flee
because of the black neighborhood starts shooting the fuck back.
I love it and here Cambridge, Maryland was under Marshall

(28:55):
Law for a year as a result of these riots.
The major civil rights leader on the East shore of
Maryland was a woman named Gloria Richardson, and she believed
in non violence as a strategy, but just a strategy.
And black snipers walked on rooftops, waited on rooftops to protest,
to protect nonviolent protesters from white supremacists. That's the Maryland

(29:17):
that Quasi grew up in. So he joins the army
because he grows up and it's his option, and he
deploys to Germany. And this is the mid sixties, and
racist soldiers keep fucking with black soldiers. So he and
other folks form a group called de Legislators, and the
legislators just beat the shit out of the racists.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Come through, Come through, legislators.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yes, yeah, I want to quote him directly. We blacks
who felt we were marked men, we had a secret
meeting and formed an organization based on fucking up racists.
We called ourselves de Legislators because we were going to
make and enforce new laws that were fair. From then on,
every time time a racial situation appeared, we did two

(30:03):
every time white gis ganged up on a black GI
we moved to more than even the score. One at
a time. We would catch up with them and beat
and stomp them so bad that helicopters would have to
be used to take them to better hospitals than the
ones in the area. We were not. Yeah, yeah, a bar?

Speaker 3 (30:21):
What a bar is that? For the group?

Speaker 2 (30:23):
I know?

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Well, afterwards we would have critiques, just like at the
end of war games, get our alibis together and keep
the whole thing under our hats.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
I'm inspired.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
I know they got away with it too, because they
because no one talks, everyone walks because and they like
they performed it like military missions. They were like, how
do we fuck up this racist? You know?

Speaker 3 (30:49):
Yeah? And also there's not much you could do if
you're constantly getting your ass founded, you know what I'm saying, Like, Yeah,
y'all could be mad, but you kind of need us
here to fight your war. That's actually what you've designed
us to you a little bit. And now we're really
good at it. And you don't want to get stop?
Do you just stop saying? Also, the bar are so
low for hot to stop getting your ass beat. Just

(31:10):
keep your stop running your mouth and then it's over
a beautiful strategy. Brilliant.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Yeah. So he spends three years in the military and
then he gets out. He's honorably discharged in nineteen sixty seven,
and now he knows how to fight, he knows how
to shoot, and he knows how to organize against racists.
And there's a long history of black men in the
US leaving the military and being like, oh, the real
enemy is here in the US, and suddenly happy sucks when.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
Your enemy treats you better than your home country. That's
just got to be a total mindfuck to be like, Okay,
how are we better off in Nazi territory? Yeah, doesn't
make sense?

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah yeah. Fuck. So soon enough he moves to New
York City. He's organizing rent strikes and volunteering with the
Central Harlem Committee for Self Defense. At one point, as
a housing protest, he shows up at US Congress at
hearing about housing problems and he brings a cage full

(32:06):
of rats as a visual aid for how black people
were housed in New York. He gets arrested for this.
He doesn't even release the rats.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
They said, we don't care if what your visual is true. Yeah,
you brought. I have to look at a rat. Send
him to prison where there are definitely more rats. Solving
the problem. Oh my god, exhausting.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
He gets out. I don't think he spent too long
for that one. He goes. He spends a lot of
time in jail, but he gets into Black nationalism. His
time overseas had put him in contact with Africans and
he started wearing his hair natural. In New York City,
he started attending the Yoruba Temple, Yoruba being the religion
of the Yoruba people from mostly what is present day Nigeria.

(32:51):
And at this point he changed his name to Quasi Ballagoon.
And eventually the Panthers come to New York and he
joins and will pick up the rest of his story later.
I just wanted to do a little aside about panthers
in the military.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
Riveting.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Yeah, i'd. In October nineteen sixty six, the Black Panther
Party for Self Defense formed in Oakland, California. It was
started by two friends, Bobby Seal and Huey P.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Newton.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Bobby Seeal was born in Texas moved with his family
to the Bay when he was eight. He joined the
Air Force he got kicked out for fighting an officer.
Then he went to Merit Community College with the goal
of becoming an engineer. Huey P. Newton was born in
Louisiana and his family fled the racist violence to the Bay.
He wounded up also at Merrit community colleges, where they

(33:37):
meet and become friends. It's not actually where the panthers start,
but and then there's this whole narrative I know a
little bit less about where over at the bigger schools,
African students brought the Marxism that had just sent their
countries free from colonization. So they started talking with folks
who went to the community colleges in the area and
setting up African study groups. And that when I like

(33:58):
that one I didn't read a book. I heard someone say,
so that is so fast.

Speaker 3 (34:02):
I've never heard that before. But it makes a lot
of sense. That's fascinating, I.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
Know, And so that's why I like even though I yeah,
and Hughie and Bobby, both of them are like Malcolm
X is fucking right. Also, Robert F. Williams, the guy
from North Carolina who turned the NAACP in his town
into a community defense organization that guy was right too,
we should do something about all the fucking racism. Specifically

(34:29):
in this case, they wanted to do something about the
racist police, so they started the Black Panther Party for
Self Defense. A couple years later, it drops the for
Self Defense and it's just the Black Panther Party. Bobby
is the chairman, Hue is the Minister of Defense. Their
first recruit is actually yet another Bobby, Bobby Hutton, who
was sixteen at the time, and he becomes the treasurer

(34:49):
and the first thing they there's kind of this thing
I don't know if you haven't the same way that
like Rosa Parks is like old in my head. Sometimes
when people do things in the sixties, they're inherently old,
right because they m and before I was born, you know.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Yes, I don't know, but my parents were born in
the late fifties, early sixties, and I envisioned anyone who
was an adult at the time of their birth to
be old. Yeah, no matter what they were doing or
what time period.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I think it's like really important
not to like put them down, but to raise them
up to be Like the Black Panthers is just some
people who are like we have a problem. What can
we do about it?

Speaker 3 (35:28):
Most of them babies, Yeah, most of them so very
very very young, or you're like how, not even how,
but you're it lends so much space and credit to
what is accomplishable if you have a unified goal. And
their goals were simple and concrete, and therefore their plans

(35:51):
were effective, and they lived by the manter you gave earlier,
which is power to the people. Was the truxt of
everything they did. Was like, what if we just educated
and gave power the people, the power to make the
change you know that they want? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
No, they yeah, And I think it's like really telling
that they're inspiring across ideological lines and like always have been,
you know, yes, well not always, like some people hated them, right,
but like you know, so the first thing they did
was community patrols. It was an armed cop watch basically,

(36:29):
and this is before cop watch was like a thing.
And they were like, well, it's legal to carry loaded
long long guns in this city, so we're gonna get
some shotguns and we're going to follow cops around and
tell everyone they're hassling what their rights are. Fuck.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
That takes some courage, like yes, and again a brilliant
strategy that lends because if you know your rights, you
know them when you're arrested. You know, then when you're
sitting in a prison cell, you know them when you're
being coursed into giving a statement. Yeah, you know, it's
just such a it's a as far as like act.
When I think about activism now, and I think especially

(37:06):
coming out of the era of activism we've come through,
where it was the visible activism to people outside of
the community was often led by quote an influencer, often
not actively engaged in the activism. And it's a problem.
And there's been great people on the ground making community
moments happen and making for a lot of change, but

(37:27):
it wasn't seen, I think, to the great majority of people,
just by design of the action. And I just it's
incredible to think about what these guys were doing early
and to think about how dangerous it was.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah, totally, and like I mean, it'll come up. A
lot of them don't survive, you know. Yeah, but first
they have to get some shotguns. They don't start out
with shotguns. They don't. They need some money, but you
know who has money. This isn't an ad transition. I
thought it was I know you do, dear listen, No, uh,

(38:01):
rich white liberals have money and what yourselves well to
rich white liberals the sort of authenticity of struggle by
people of color. So they bought Mao's Little Red Book
in bulk and sold it on college campuses at three
times markup to all the like young white communists around.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah uh, and they use it to buy shotguns. And
they got their logo and therefore their name from the
the Lone Discounty Freedom Organization, which was an Alabama black
power group that was using a black panther as its logo.
And I'm like, all right, they didn't come up with
a black panther. I don't care. They're like some people

(38:41):
who anyway.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
They I mean, listen, this is what happens. You see
a symbol, you're like, hey, that feel like that represents me,
and they do adapt it and add it to your
That totally makes use up. The black Panthers sympoo looks
cold as fuck. That's why you still see so many
people in the free food program shirts. Yeah look amazing.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Yeah. They got themselves a storefront all and they started
a newspaper. It was a small group at first. When
an unarmed black man was killed by cops in Richmond, California,
the Panthers, who are invited by the man's family, started
holding armed rallies to bring attention to that police murder.
People started trickling into the party because here people like

(39:17):
fucking doing something. And frankly, I read accounts of why
people joined the Panthers and a lot of people say, like, look,
the non violence shit was fine, but it just doesn't
speak to me, you know, but people like standing up,
so is non violence. I'm not trying to talk shit
on nonviolence, right, It's going to reach different people.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
And yeah, you have to be somebody who can be
at peace in a chaotic situation to you embrace actual
nonviolent activism, because the very first thing that happens is
they're going to try to incite you into violence. And
if that is not you know, you can get spit on,
you might get hit. Like, it's so much zen to
be consistent in that kind of move me as opposed

(40:01):
to you know, if you hit me, I'm hit you back.
That makes a lot of sense to me, I get
I'll be attracted to this approach.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah, and there's one anecdote I ran across that want
to share. It's from the forward to a book whose
title I literally cannot say. I'm just going to call
the book just another dot dot dot. It is an
autobiography by the panthers Field Marshall Don Cox. It's a
brilliant book design. Cover too right, because this is just
another in white and then the other words in black.

(40:29):
It's like black on black and hard to read.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
His daughter was like clearly like mad that she had
to publish it under that name, but that was like
what he insisted on, and he had died right anyway.
This is his daughter writing from the introduction of that
book is Don Cox. Is Don Cox's daughter quote. When
I was going to a Lutheran school, I wore my
hair in a curly afro one day. How proud I
was until I got to school. The principle told me

(40:55):
that my hair looked a mess. I promptly called Daddy,
and I don't remember what I told him, but the
next thing I knew, here comes Daddy in about four
or five panthers, looking fine and sharp and all black turtlenecks, pants,
leather coats and berets. I never heard my daddy raise
his voice. I think I would have crapped my pants
if I did. And when he spoke, he always spoke
eloquently and softly and looked you directly in the eyes.

(41:16):
For people who didn't know him, that alone could make
them crap their pants. I didn't hear what he said
to the principal that day, but at the end of
the year I left that school for good.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
M amazing.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Yeah, I think that that's like just the like a
I don't know, that moment of like being like, yeah,
there's like people are gonna have some words if you're
you know, like, here come actual heroes.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
I think it's interesting, like, yeah, here come a group
of people to defend your right to just exist. And
I think frequently if that has been nigh to you,
especially as a child, my guy, like, it's really beautiful
that a whole bunch of people came together to make
sure that at the very least nobody was gonna up
with you anymore. I mean, they can probably change the
rules at the school or whatever, and I'm sure people

(42:04):
are still assholes, but at least she neither are people
who had.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
Her back totally totally. But you know, who else has
your back?

Speaker 2 (42:13):
Joelle?

Speaker 3 (42:15):
Who has my back?

Speaker 1 (42:16):
The products and services that support this show.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
I feel so SUPPORTID. That's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
And we're back so well. You were not the most
effective way to get gun laws past us, Oh do tell?
The answer is once left us, especially immigrants and people
of color, especially black men, start carrying, Oh, right is in.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
Then you feel the need to carry, and then the
gun laws of God to get more like I see.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
The vision, Yeah, I see the vision. The very first
episode of this podcast was about German anarchist immigrants in
Chicago and the first gun laws in that area were
passed because German immigrants were using the gun law to
have open carry parades, right for defend themselves as workers.
And so Chicago was like, never mind about the guns,

(43:09):
no more guns. It took California a little. Oh, and
then New York goes way back before the US was
even a thing. There were specific gun laws that they
wrote that were like no indigenous people and no Catholics
can own firearms.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
They really hated the Catholics in New York for a while.
What a strange time that was.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah, So the Panther started open carrying loaded long guns
in California, and the government freaked the fuck out. Republicans,
including Ronald fucking Reagan, scrambled to outlaw open carry. This
was called the Mulford Act. Republicans, Democrats, and the National
Rifle Association all agreed, if black people are carrying guns,

(43:49):
guns should be illegal. And this isn't even like my
propagandist spin on this that I've never read any history
that disputes that this is what happened. So on May second,
nineteen sixty seven, the Black Panthers entered the national spotlight.
Twenty six armed Panthers showed up at the California State Capitol, like,

(44:11):
walked into the Capitol building with their guns. This is
before the law has passed, so it was legal for
them to do so. Six of them, including Bobby Seal,
were arrested. And this was incredibly good pr for the Panthers.
I mean, it probably also made people even more like
to see, this is why we have to ban guns
or whatever. But like all over the country people were like, oh,

(44:34):
now we've heard of the Black Panthers and they're fucking cool.
Hell yeah. So they released their ten point platform. The
very first point is quote, we want freedom, we want
power to determine the destiny of our black community. And
then the rest of the points, it's things like, we
want full employment, we want to get the capitalists out,

(44:56):
we want housing, we want education that actually teaches people
the truth. We want black men to be exempted from
military service. We want the end of police brutality, we
want black men released from prison, we want trial by
actual juries of our actual peers. And the last one
was quote, we want land bred, housing, education, clothing, justice,
and peace.

Speaker 3 (45:18):
It's so sad that we have gotten none of those.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
Fuck.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Yep, fuck, that's really devastating.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
Yeah, but a beautiful list, a lovely thing to aspire to.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
Yeah. They also very shortly after, got their first living martyr,
not so many dies. They got a political prisoner, Huey P. Newton,
one of the founders. He gets We actually don't know
what happened here. He was pulled over and arrested, and
then two cops ended up shot and Huey P. Newton

(45:54):
was also shot. One of the cops ended up shot
to death. This was our after Hughie was our already arrested.
The police's story is that Huey wrestled one of the
cops guns away from him and shot the cop to death.
The surviving cop story. Huey's story is that the two
cops were shooting at him, but they were standing on
opposite sides of him and shot each other friendly fire.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
Sounds so fucking believable, So just appsite, I know, lutely.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Probable, I know, and like I also, like one panther later,
there's a lot of panther expose's that come out afterwards.
Some of them are like people who still like the panthers,
some of people who don't like the panthers anymore, and
all this stuff right. One panther later claims hue would
drunkenly brag about killing the cop, But honestly, either way
is believable, and I kind of don't care, Like hmm,

(46:46):
I'm like, yep, you're getting arrested by people who are
screaming and just as likely to kill you as not,
and you defend yourself and you managed to do it
while you're handcuffed. That's fucking powerful. Or cops are so
fucking because cops crossfire, shoot each other all the fucking time,
all the.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
Goddamn time, shoot themselves in the foot, in the groin. Yeah,
it's just hit their partners.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Just yeah, So he was a Huey Panu was arrested
and he was convicted of murder in nineteen sixty eight,
but his conviction was overturned in nineteen seventy. Not that
he was specifically I think it wasn't that he was
specifically found innocent. I think is that they like found
that the trial was all fucked up and everything was
fucked up about it, and it was clearly all set

(47:31):
up and all this shit. But along the way, while
he's in jail, the free Hueye campaign spreads across the
country and the Panthers are off to the races. One
of the things I read about it is that like
the white radicals would wear our honkeys for Huey Pin.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
Okay, yeah, it's a solidarity, I.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
Guess, yes. Especially in April nineteen sixty eight, when the
polite voice of civil rights doctor Martin Luther King Junior
was murdered, the polite conversation was over, and so the
Panthers are now like at the forefront. Two days later,
during the riots that spread across the country after Martin

(48:07):
Luther King Junior was killed, some of the Panthers and
some cops ended up in a ninety minute shootout. There's
different versions of who started it. I don't fucking know,
kind of don't care, or rather I support the Panthers
either way. Is where I'm at. Bobby Hutton, who is
seventeen at the time, he was the first recruit. He

(48:28):
was the treasurer. He tried to surrender, He stripped down
before going outside to show that he was unarmed, and
the cops murdered him as he was trying to give
himself up. Yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
I'd just sit with that for a minute. It makes
me really fucking sad. Also in nineteen sixty eight, two
important things happen. First, the Panthers spread across the country,
like the more City Star chapters than I feel like
recitings like thirty six or something. Their newspaper has a
circulation of a quarter of a million copies at this point.

(49:07):
And the other main thing that starts in nineteen sixty eight,
which I'm really excited to talk about, are the survival programs,
most famously the free breakfast program, which we'll talk about
on Wednesday. That's my cliffhanger about breakfast.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
It's a good one. Thanks that's a good one. You
want to come back because you have to learn about
why we spent all that time talking about breakfast. Top
of the show.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
They do so much cool shit the second half of this.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
I'm so excited.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
Yeah, also cool are the things that you want to
talk about here at the end of the episode.

Speaker 3 (49:48):
If you listen to the show, you probably like really
radical acts. My current radical act is to help a
friend launch a production company that seeks to rewrite the
codes by which we make film. Doing this in a
number of ways. We are studying and learning a lot
about New Zealand and the UK's film laws, which have

(50:09):
really strict laws about how long you can be on set,
what a break looks like, how people get paid. And
we're launching this by crafting a film. It's called Dinner.
It is a satirical horror film about the way toxic
work environments follow you home. It's very funny, it's super

(50:30):
dark and twisty. I'm elated to be making this film.
I'm it with friends from college. I went to film school.
They went on to graduate from AFI and work for
a bunch of different production companies around town. And they all,
you know, all of us have been like, we want
to get back to our art, so this is our
chance to do that and hopefully create some change. So

(50:52):
we are raising money on a website. It's called Seed
and Spark Seed and Spark spa r K. If you
head over there, you can just type in dinner in
the search bark, type in my name Joel Monique It's
j O E l E m oen iq u E
and you can do a couple of things. So if
you want to donate, that's so lovely and we appreciate it.

(51:14):
We are about thirty percent funded. We have the time
of this drops maybe thirty five days ish left to
raise the money we have I think about eight thousand
dollars left to go comewhere in there, so we're trucking along.
We just got a grant for fifteen hundred. You can
also just follow it. If you follow it, that helps

(51:35):
us become eligible for more grants. It's a huge help
and we love a follow. Or you can just share
the link with your buddies and be like, hey, this
cool person is making a film. Maybe support them. You
learn about our cast and crew and our goals on
the website, so it's just seen in spark dot com.
There's also a lot of other films if you want
to support indie filmmakers on there. In a time when

(51:55):
our industry is going through quite a lot of uphea will,
here's an opportunity for folks to really launch and hopefully
support long term careers in independent filmmaking.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah, that's my spiel. Okay, that is a good spiel
and gonna be way too necessary in the very very
new future.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
Maybe the studio system will collapse.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Oh no, where would I get's corporate entity? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (52:22):
Gone, there's no Internet where we could just launch films
of dope independent people. And there's a lot of little
indie cinema houses that could screen them. And what if
we had regional cinema. Look at what Bollywood's doing, It's
pretty cool. I have a lot of Yeah, if.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
You want to follow me, I quit Twitter, so you
can't follow me there, I mean you still can. I
didn't delete it. Well, actually Twitter went away. I didn't
quit Twitter. Twitter just gave stopped existing. But I will
not continue on X because my quality of life has
improved already in the week that I am not constantly
shown transphobes. And you can find me on Instagram, which

(53:05):
is Margaret Kiljoy and then you can also find me
on substack. Now it's like the main way I'm doing
a lot of my writing. And if you want to
keep up with the kinds of things I used to
talk about on Twitter, like community preparedness or little history
bits that didn't fit into here, it's Margaret Kiljoy dot
substack dot com. And twice a month I do a
free post that like is like more Maddy matters to

(53:27):
the larger audience, and then twice a month I also
do a like more personal post. Right now, I'm writing
a bunch of memoirs, So if you want to hear
about me dropping out of college to be a street
kid and try and fight capitalism, you can read about
it on my substack. Sophie, what do you get?

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Uh, just follow at cool Zone Media on all the
platforms we still exist on, and we do have our
adverse subscription channel that is currently on Apple and I
think in just a couple of weeks will be available
for a droid and non Apple users. YEA more on
that soon, So just look up cooler Zone Media and uh, yeah,

(54:07):
and you know, pet a dog if they want you.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
To, yeah, and don't if it's a stranger dog. Don't
start by sticking your hand directly at the dog's face.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
Please, don't do it.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
Yeah, well, don't.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Don't run up to dogs on the street unless they've
you've been told you can.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Yeah, all right, we'll see you on Wednesday.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
They Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.