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The Black Panthers
The Black Panthers (1969) by Gene Marine illustrates just how powerful the arrival of the Black Panther Party was. To set the scene just a little bit: It’s February 1967. Eldridge Cleaver, just two months out of prison, is working at Ramparts magazine, which began publishing his Soul on Ice essays while he was still locked up. Cleaver, not yet a Black Panther, is a part of an organization which is hosting Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz for a series of Bay Area speaking engagements surrounding the second anniversary of Malcolm’s assassination. The newly formed, but already notorious, Black Panther Party for Self Defense is hired to provide security for Mrs. Shabazz while she is in the Bay Area.
224 pages, paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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May 6, 2026
A 1969 ACCOUNT OF THE PANTHERS AND THEIR LEADERS BY A JOURNALIST
Gene Marine (1926-2012) was a professional journalist, radio newsman, and author. He wrote in the Introduction to this 1969 book, “I won’t write about the problems of black people. I shall write only about white problems, and in fact only about one of them. That white problem is called the Black Panther Party… Perhaps no white man---and I am white---can adequately convey the background of being black which is necessary in order really to understand the Panthers, who exist now in every major city in America and quite a few smaller ones… So I have undertaken to ‘explain’ the Black Panthers, as best I can, as a white reporter writing primarily for other whites.
“Unless your politics are radical enough to have put you outside the ‘respectable’ population for a while, you will not believe some of what you read. Police do not act in our neighborhoods as they do in this book… I am not a cop hater, though; I am a reporter… I have done my best in what follows to REPORT on the origins and development of the Black Panther Party and on its expressed and implied philosophies, regardless of whether some of the comfortable find the results uncomfortable...
“Because I do my best to describe the Black Panthers and their activities while avoiding either simplistic explanation or an automatic antimilitant bias, it may appear that I am unduly sympathetic to the organization. I AM sympathetic. As a reporter, I try to be sympathetic to anything I want… to write about. But the more I work on the subject… I know that … sympathy is not my primary feeling. Deep in my white, possibly racist, probably counterrevolutionary heart, I am afraid of the Black Panther Party.”
He notes, “Huey P. Newton… could ‘throw his hands’ with the best and could thus command respect for his words in a group of street brothers, a group of young men who had spent their lives listening to big talkers. You listen best to the man who can back it up; and you follow the man who proves he’ll fight for you if you need help. Increasing numbers of blacks today look to the Black Panthers for essentially the same reasons for which young blacks at Merritt College began to look to Huey Newton.” (Pg. 29)
He reports that after a knife fight at a party, “Huey went to prison for eight months and three years’ probation (he was arrested for the murder of Oakland policemen John Frey just one day before his probation was to expire). If eight months in prison does not have a fairly profound effect on you, then you’re nowhere as brilliant and sensitive as Huey P. Newton. He came out not so much embittered as disgusted, and deeply thoughtful about the brutalization and dehumanization that he had seen … he came out, thinking that … to be in prison is very much like being black outside, because outside, if you are black, the prison is just as real, the odds for escape are even lower, the brutalizing and dehumanizing process goes on every day just the same. Prison for a black man, Huey suggests, is only a metaphor for life.” (Pg. 31)
After Newton and [Bobby] Seale formed the ‘Black Panther Party for Self-Defense,’ Newton set down the famous ‘Ten Points’: 1. We want freedom, we want power to determine the destiny of our black communities. 2. We want full employment for our peoples. 3. We want housing fit for shelter of human beings. 4. We want all black men to be exempt from military service. 5. We want decent education… that teaches us the true nature of this decadent, racist society… 6. We want an end to the robbery by the white racist businessmen of black people in their community. 7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people. 8. We want all black men held in city, county, state, and Federal jails to be released because they have not had a fair trial. 9. We want black people … to be tried by members of their peer group, a peer being one who comes from the same economic, social, religious, historical, and racial background. 10. We want land, bread, housing, clothing, education, justice, and peace.” (Pg. 35-36)
He reports, “The first step was to get some guns, and to get them, Seale and Newton had one of their cleverer ideas… Seale relates, ‘We went over to the China Book Store in San Francisco and bought up two batches of the Red books [‘Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung’]… and we sold them at Cal campus [then bought/sold lots more]… the next thing I know, we had enough monry to buy two shotguns.’” (Pg. 40) “Newton had carefully researched California law (which has since, partly because of the Panthers, been changed). It was perfectly legal for any citizen to carry a loaded, unconcealed gun. In an automobile, only a handgun could be loaded… Huey himself, still on probation, would carry a rifle or shotgun, but not a pistol… Newton compiled a list of 13 legal points which he drilled into Panther members… once the Panthers themselves had mastered them, it became part of their work to inform as many black citizens as possible about their own rights.” (Pg. 40-41)
In one of their early confrontations with Oakland police, Newton told a gathering crowd, ‘You have a right to observe an officer carrying out his duty… as long as you stand a reasonable distance away.’ … through it all, the other Panthers sat quietly, orderly, and disciplined. Ultimately, the police had to give in: they knew they were confronted with something more than merely a group of armed blacks. The impact on the watching crowd was electric… [They saw] something they had never seen before: black men, proud and dignified, daring to meet the white policemen on equal terms and face him down.” (Pg. 42-43)
He recounts of their famous 1967 entry into the State Capitol, “Seale ... read a statement by Huey Newton on the gun law... there was, however, no argument about the Panthers’ right to enter, as the guards and policeman immediately recognized that no law was being violated (the Panthers were careful to point their weapons either straight down or straight up; there was no law against carrying them, but there was and is one against aiming them).” (Pg. 63)
He states, “the Panthers are solidly opposed to the spontaneous riot, and have proved it a dozen times by cooling minor incidents that might have become major ones… There is more than one way to protect the black community. That doesn’t make the papers, and it isn’t covered by television. Nor does the white community read about the streetlight, nor the free breakfasts for children, nor the school visits… [where they] told students not to hate whites, but to learn to work with them.” (Pg. 72)
After Newton was imprisoned, “there were ‘Free Huey’ bumper strips all over the Bay Area… This a strange attitude toward a man who, whatever his provocation, was accused of shooting a policeman---and this before he had been tried and before most of his supporters had any details about the morning of October 28. How can you cry ‘Free Huey!’ when you don’t even know the facts about his arrest?” (Pg. 106)
He continues, “during this period [Eldridge] Cleaver sought… to find some allies… Cleaver forged the beginnings of an alliance with that area’s Chicano movement (the ‘Brown Berets’)… Equally important… he began the search for white allies. There was one excellent possibility. Opposition to the war ran high in California…” (Pg. 109)
He reports, “McGraw-Hill had published Cleaver’s remarkable book, ‘Soul on Ice,’ which immediately leaped to the best-seller lists and made Cleaver … a national celebrity among whites even before the April ‘shoot-out’. That event, and the subsequent publicity surrounding his imprisonment and his flight for freedom, elevated him to full celebrity status in white America… the young … responded to Cleaver’s earthy eloquence and the obvious genuineness of his … ghetto-and-prison background.” (Pg. 180)
He says of the Algiers Hotel shooting, “no matter how many white reporters… discover for themselves… how the police really act toward black Americans in urban ghettos… white Americans still react… as though each is an isolated example of misbehavior by one of two or three ‘bad cops’…” (Pg. 188)
He notes “the Panthers’ derogatory attitude toward ‘cultural nationalism’---blacks who … stress their blackness with pride, but who do it solely by relating to African culture, often dropping completely out of the American political scene… and devoting their lives to … [e.g.] the study of Swahili.” (Pg. 207)
He concludes, “where the Panthers go, violence follows… the number dead, or wounded, or in prison continues to rise and may be escalating. The biggest recruiting problem of the Black Panther Party may turn out to be that membership brings with it a decidedly attenuated life expectancy.” (Pg. 211)
This book (which is largely ‘sympathetic’ to the Panthers) will be of interest to those wanting an account of the Panthers by an ‘outsider.’
Gene Marine (1926-2012) was a professional journalist, radio newsman, and author. He wrote in the Introduction to this 1969 book, “I won’t write about the problems of black people. I shall write only about white problems, and in fact only about one of them. That white problem is called the Black Panther Party… Perhaps no white man---and I am white---can adequately convey the background of being black which is necessary in order really to understand the Panthers, who exist now in every major city in America and quite a few smaller ones… So I have undertaken to ‘explain’ the Black Panthers, as best I can, as a white reporter writing primarily for other whites.
“Unless your politics are radical enough to have put you outside the ‘respectable’ population for a while, you will not believe some of what you read. Police do not act in our neighborhoods as they do in this book… I am not a cop hater, though; I am a reporter… I have done my best in what follows to REPORT on the origins and development of the Black Panther Party and on its expressed and implied philosophies, regardless of whether some of the comfortable find the results uncomfortable...
“Because I do my best to describe the Black Panthers and their activities while avoiding either simplistic explanation or an automatic antimilitant bias, it may appear that I am unduly sympathetic to the organization. I AM sympathetic. As a reporter, I try to be sympathetic to anything I want… to write about. But the more I work on the subject… I know that … sympathy is not my primary feeling. Deep in my white, possibly racist, probably counterrevolutionary heart, I am afraid of the Black Panther Party.”
He notes, “Huey P. Newton… could ‘throw his hands’ with the best and could thus command respect for his words in a group of street brothers, a group of young men who had spent their lives listening to big talkers. You listen best to the man who can back it up; and you follow the man who proves he’ll fight for you if you need help. Increasing numbers of blacks today look to the Black Panthers for essentially the same reasons for which young blacks at Merritt College began to look to Huey Newton.” (Pg. 29)
He reports that after a knife fight at a party, “Huey went to prison for eight months and three years’ probation (he was arrested for the murder of Oakland policemen John Frey just one day before his probation was to expire). If eight months in prison does not have a fairly profound effect on you, then you’re nowhere as brilliant and sensitive as Huey P. Newton. He came out not so much embittered as disgusted, and deeply thoughtful about the brutalization and dehumanization that he had seen … he came out, thinking that … to be in prison is very much like being black outside, because outside, if you are black, the prison is just as real, the odds for escape are even lower, the brutalizing and dehumanizing process goes on every day just the same. Prison for a black man, Huey suggests, is only a metaphor for life.” (Pg. 31)
After Newton and [Bobby] Seale formed the ‘Black Panther Party for Self-Defense,’ Newton set down the famous ‘Ten Points’: 1. We want freedom, we want power to determine the destiny of our black communities. 2. We want full employment for our peoples. 3. We want housing fit for shelter of human beings. 4. We want all black men to be exempt from military service. 5. We want decent education… that teaches us the true nature of this decadent, racist society… 6. We want an end to the robbery by the white racist businessmen of black people in their community. 7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people. 8. We want all black men held in city, county, state, and Federal jails to be released because they have not had a fair trial. 9. We want black people … to be tried by members of their peer group, a peer being one who comes from the same economic, social, religious, historical, and racial background. 10. We want land, bread, housing, clothing, education, justice, and peace.” (Pg. 35-36)
He reports, “The first step was to get some guns, and to get them, Seale and Newton had one of their cleverer ideas… Seale relates, ‘We went over to the China Book Store in San Francisco and bought up two batches of the Red books [‘Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung’]… and we sold them at Cal campus [then bought/sold lots more]… the next thing I know, we had enough monry to buy two shotguns.’” (Pg. 40) “Newton had carefully researched California law (which has since, partly because of the Panthers, been changed). It was perfectly legal for any citizen to carry a loaded, unconcealed gun. In an automobile, only a handgun could be loaded… Huey himself, still on probation, would carry a rifle or shotgun, but not a pistol… Newton compiled a list of 13 legal points which he drilled into Panther members… once the Panthers themselves had mastered them, it became part of their work to inform as many black citizens as possible about their own rights.” (Pg. 40-41)
In one of their early confrontations with Oakland police, Newton told a gathering crowd, ‘You have a right to observe an officer carrying out his duty… as long as you stand a reasonable distance away.’ … through it all, the other Panthers sat quietly, orderly, and disciplined. Ultimately, the police had to give in: they knew they were confronted with something more than merely a group of armed blacks. The impact on the watching crowd was electric… [They saw] something they had never seen before: black men, proud and dignified, daring to meet the white policemen on equal terms and face him down.” (Pg. 42-43)
He recounts of their famous 1967 entry into the State Capitol, “Seale ... read a statement by Huey Newton on the gun law... there was, however, no argument about the Panthers’ right to enter, as the guards and policeman immediately recognized that no law was being violated (the Panthers were careful to point their weapons either straight down or straight up; there was no law against carrying them, but there was and is one against aiming them).” (Pg. 63)
He states, “the Panthers are solidly opposed to the spontaneous riot, and have proved it a dozen times by cooling minor incidents that might have become major ones… There is more than one way to protect the black community. That doesn’t make the papers, and it isn’t covered by television. Nor does the white community read about the streetlight, nor the free breakfasts for children, nor the school visits… [where they] told students not to hate whites, but to learn to work with them.” (Pg. 72)
After Newton was imprisoned, “there were ‘Free Huey’ bumper strips all over the Bay Area… This a strange attitude toward a man who, whatever his provocation, was accused of shooting a policeman---and this before he had been tried and before most of his supporters had any details about the morning of October 28. How can you cry ‘Free Huey!’ when you don’t even know the facts about his arrest?” (Pg. 106)
He continues, “during this period [Eldridge] Cleaver sought… to find some allies… Cleaver forged the beginnings of an alliance with that area’s Chicano movement (the ‘Brown Berets’)… Equally important… he began the search for white allies. There was one excellent possibility. Opposition to the war ran high in California…” (Pg. 109)
He reports, “McGraw-Hill had published Cleaver’s remarkable book, ‘Soul on Ice,’ which immediately leaped to the best-seller lists and made Cleaver … a national celebrity among whites even before the April ‘shoot-out’. That event, and the subsequent publicity surrounding his imprisonment and his flight for freedom, elevated him to full celebrity status in white America… the young … responded to Cleaver’s earthy eloquence and the obvious genuineness of his … ghetto-and-prison background.” (Pg. 180)
He says of the Algiers Hotel shooting, “no matter how many white reporters… discover for themselves… how the police really act toward black Americans in urban ghettos… white Americans still react… as though each is an isolated example of misbehavior by one of two or three ‘bad cops’…” (Pg. 188)
He notes “the Panthers’ derogatory attitude toward ‘cultural nationalism’---blacks who … stress their blackness with pride, but who do it solely by relating to African culture, often dropping completely out of the American political scene… and devoting their lives to … [e.g.] the study of Swahili.” (Pg. 207)
He concludes, “where the Panthers go, violence follows… the number dead, or wounded, or in prison continues to rise and may be escalating. The biggest recruiting problem of the Black Panther Party may turn out to be that membership brings with it a decidedly attenuated life expectancy.” (Pg. 211)
This book (which is largely ‘sympathetic’ to the Panthers) will be of interest to those wanting an account of the Panthers by an ‘outsider.’
May 8, 2022
Pretty good review of the BPP founders' life. Marine presents the ideological influences and junctures that lead Newton, Seale and Celaver to craft a movement for creating awareness around racisim in the US.
However, from the very beginning the author recognizes the inherent limitations of him -as a white citizen- for fully understanding the struggles that derived in the existence of the Black Panthers (which is the same reason why, in my opinion, the last chapter and the conclusions presented on it are a bit off). Still, this book contains a very solid approach to the importance that this movement got during the late 60s. Strongly recommended.
However, from the very beginning the author recognizes the inherent limitations of him -as a white citizen- for fully understanding the struggles that derived in the existence of the Black Panthers (which is the same reason why, in my opinion, the last chapter and the conclusions presented on it are a bit off). Still, this book contains a very solid approach to the importance that this movement got during the late 60s. Strongly recommended.
July 24, 2025
If you're new to the black panthers or looking for an introduction into them then this is an ok book. Gene Marine is a white journalist trying to introduce the motives and methods of the Panthers to a white audience in an honest but palpable way to hopefully get them to understand their own racial bias that exist? I say that as a question cause that is what he says in his last chapter but the book itself, I don't feel, he does it. The book is very informative, but in the way a history book is informative. It spits a lot of facts at you but not much in the way of insight. It makes sense though because Gene is a journalist and that is what journalist do.
It felt like the longest parts of the book were just regurgitating news and trial transcripts of the Huey Newton trial and police and Panther statements after a big shootout between them where Eldridge Cleaver was shot and Bobby Hutton was killed.
I personally picked up this book hoping to learn more about how The Black Panthers organized and hopefully more about how they were involved with their communities with more insight into their theory and motives beyond just their 10 points. I'm sure there are other books related to the Panthers that might do a better job doing that so I'll keep looking.
I did get two things from this book though, and that is learning of Fanon's Wretched of the Earth book which is said to have inspired Newton to start the Panthers with Bobby Seale, and knowledge of Julius Nyerere effort to build socialism in Tanzania and a few essays/books he made to help understand his theories. So I am looking forward to checking that out.
It felt like the longest parts of the book were just regurgitating news and trial transcripts of the Huey Newton trial and police and Panther statements after a big shootout between them where Eldridge Cleaver was shot and Bobby Hutton was killed.
I personally picked up this book hoping to learn more about how The Black Panthers organized and hopefully more about how they were involved with their communities with more insight into their theory and motives beyond just their 10 points. I'm sure there are other books related to the Panthers that might do a better job doing that so I'll keep looking.
I did get two things from this book though, and that is learning of Fanon's Wretched of the Earth book which is said to have inspired Newton to start the Panthers with Bobby Seale, and knowledge of Julius Nyerere effort to build socialism in Tanzania and a few essays/books he made to help understand his theories. So I am looking forward to checking that out.
June 22, 2020
If you read this today, and the subject said BLM instead of Black Panthers, it is remarkably synonymous for the times. Sure the specifics and history are different, but the sentiment and approach are fascinating.
For myself, as a white creator, connected to Hip Hop, trying to understand how to ally, I found myself realy connecting to Gene. Like this man could be 1960's me.
He approaches the issues in such a way where it's almost hard to remember this is 1969 and not 2020.
The systemic issues he describes with regards to police departments, well, hard to remember it's 2020 now and he is describing 1969. Worth the read.
For myself, as a white creator, connected to Hip Hop, trying to understand how to ally, I found myself realy connecting to Gene. Like this man could be 1960's me.
He approaches the issues in such a way where it's almost hard to remember this is 1969 and not 2020.
The systemic issues he describes with regards to police departments, well, hard to remember it's 2020 now and he is describing 1969. Worth the read.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews