The Black Panthers of Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States, 1948-1977 by Anne-Marie

482 Pages·2013·8.25 MB·English

‘Any Name That Has Power’: The Black Panthers of Israel, the United Kingdom, and the
United States, 1948-1977
by
Anne-Marie Angelo
Department of History
Duke University

Date:_______________________
Approved:

___________________________
William Chafe, Supervisor

___________________________
Tina Campt

___________________________
Sarah Deutsch

___________________________
Adriane Lentz-Smith

___________________________
Rebecca Stein

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy in the Department of
History in the Graduate School
of Duke University

2013
ABSTRACT
‘Any Name That Has Power’: The Black Panthers of Israel, the United Kingdom, and the
United States, 1948-1977
by
Anne-Marie Angelo
Department of History
Duke University

Date:_______________________
Approved:

___________________________
William Chafe, Supervisor

___________________________
Tina Campt

___________________________
Sarah Deutsch

___________________________
Adriane Lentz-Smith

___________________________
Rebecca Stein

An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of
History in the Graduate School of
Duke University

2013
Copyright by
Anne-Marie Angelo
2013
Abstract

The US Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was an organization of the Black
Power Movement, a cultural and a political nationalist movement central to the history of
the African-American Freedom Struggle. The Black Panthers’ anti-imperialist politics,
militant visual style, grassroots strategies, and community programs appealed within and
beyond the United States. Between 1967 and 1972, people of color struggling under class
and ethnic oppression in six countries outside the United States formed Black Panther
Parties inspired by the US Panthers. In the United Kingdom, West Indians, West
Africans, and South Asians formed a Black Panther Movement in 1968 and in Israel, a
group of Mizrahi (Arab) Jews founded a Black Panther Party in in Jerusalem in 1971.
This dissertation examines these two movements with reference to the US Black Panthers
in order to place local, national, and global histories in dialogue.
This study adopts a transnational framework that conceives of Black Power as a
movement of global migrants. From 1948 to 1967, over two million people from Asia,
Africa, and the Caribbean migrated to the UK and Israel. These migrants’ overlapping
experiences of displacement and class- and ethnic-based oppression led them to establish
Black Panther groups in their new home countries in order to raise their political concerns
under a collective banner. These people chose to become Black Panthers specifically
because the US Black Panther Party offered a name and style that connected their global
brothers and sisters to a range of grassroots strategies promoting interethnic solidarity and
the collective advancement of black communities against the social structures that
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fostered racism. Through the examination of oral histories, photographs, letters, fliers,
passport stamps, films, court cases, and surveillance files, this study focuses on how these
global Panther activists represented themselves and their politics in the public sphere.
Both the British and Israeli Panther movements first organized in response to the
city police’s harassment of youth in their neighborhoods. Their respective critiques
expanded from an opposition to police brutality to systemic goals of improving housing,
education, welfare, and employment for blacks. Both of the nation-states in which these
groups emerged relied upon the US for military stability and economic support during
this period, such that the British and Israeli Panthers saw confrontations with their
respective governments as acts of resistance to American Empire.
This dissertation, then, is at once a community study of two branches of a
transnational social movement as well as a larger story. The broader narrative reveals
how everyday people responded to the American Empire in the 1960s and 1970s, how the
US Black Panthers translated black internationalist politics into urban neighborhoods,
and how people outside the US constructed narratives about African-Americans as a way
of making sense of racial formations at home. This work also demonstrates how foreign
governments and media producers appropriated African-American history for a variety of
in political purposes during this period. This examination enables a deeper understanding
of the transnational black freedom struggle, as it centers the role that people of color
outside the United States played in creating and sustaining Black Panther Movements that
confronted American and British Empires from the grassroots.
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Dedication
For my mother, Patricia Ann Lynch Richards-Angelo, whose countless labors of
love have made this one possible, and for my brother, Shawn Patrick Angelo, who
inspires me.

v i
Contents
Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv

List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii

List of Abbreviations ......................................................................................................... xi

Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... xiii

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1

Chapter 1: Becoming ‘Black Immigrants’ in Britain and Israel, 1948-67 ........................ 38

Chapter 2: Expeditions: Black Britons reconnoiter the African-American movement,
1964-69 ............................................................................................................................. 78

Chapter 3: ‘The only force that can quell it is International Black Power.’ An anti-
imperialist Black Panther Movement materializes in London, 1967-69 ........................ 143

Chapter 4: ‘Black Oppressed People All Over the World Are One’: The British Panthers,
shadow governance, and grassroots internationalism, 1969-1973 .................................. 219

Chapter 5: ‘A Jolt to Jews Both Here and Abroad’: The Israeli Black Panther Party and
the Empire of Transnational Capital, 1971-1977 ............................................................ 297

Epilogue: The Egyptian Revolution, J14 protests, and London riots of 2011 ............... 369

Appendix A: UK Black Power organizations outside London, 1970-1971 .................... 391

Appendix B: UK Black Panther Timeline, 1969-1973 ................................................... 392
Appendix C: UK Black Panther newspaper issues by archival location, 1969-1973 ..... 413
Appendix D: Countries named in UK Panther newspapers, by order of first
appearance, 1969-1973 ................................................................................................... 416

Appendix E: Israeli cities and towns with Black Panther activity, 1971-1977 .............. 418
Appendix F: Israeli Black Panther Party members identified ........................................ 419
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 420
Biography ........................................................................................................................ 458

vi i
Figures
Figure 1: Moroccan family alights at Haifa Port, September 24, 1954.............................40
Figure 2: West Indians arrive on the boat train at Waterloo Station, October 15, 1961 . ..40
Figure 3: Moshe Friedan, The Armistice Line at the edge of Musrara ............................. 69
Figure 4: Five Met Police officers arrest a black man in Brixton ..................................... 80

Figure 5: Linton Kwesi Johnson poses for Black Panther members' photograph ............ 84

Figure 6: Panthers in their Brixton house salute Black Power ......................................... 86

Figure 7: National Front member advertises National Front News in Brixton.. ............ 109

Figure 8: Armed National Guardsmen chase black boy on The Observer Review’s front
page, 1967 ....................................................................................................................... 112
Figure 9: The Observer Review tallies US casualties of race-related violence in 1967 . 113

Figure 10: Algerian visa, August 18, 1971, validated in Algiers, September 1971 and
Algerian visa, September 8, 1972, not validated. ........................................................... 132

Figure 11: Robert F. Williams' The Crusader 9, no. 3, (Peking: December 1967).. ...... 134

Figure 12: Obi Egbuna announces UCPA’s adoption of Black Power, August 28, 1967..
......................................................................................................................................... 143

Figure 13: Stokely Carmichael speaks at Dialectics of Liberation Congress, London,
July 22, 1967. .................................................................................................................. 161

Figure 14: Carmichael speaks on UCPA platform at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park,
1967................................................................................................................................. 164

Figure 15: Obi Egbuna speaks to the press, September 10, 1967. .................................. 170

Figure 16: Pamphlet cover, Black Power in Britain: A Special Statement.. ................... 171

Figure 17: Pamphlet cover, Black Power in Britain: A Special Statement. .................... 172

Figure 18: Thousands march on the "Walk to Freedom" tribute to Martin Luther
King, Jr., April 15, 1968 ................................................................................................. 186

vi ii
Figure 19: Artwork from Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Freedom
Primer for Lowndes County Freedom Organization, 1966 ............................................ 197

Figure 20: Back cover of Black Power Speaks, UCPA newsletter, June 1968 .............. 197

Figure 21: Obi Egbuna and Kwame Nkrumah in Conakry, Guinea, July 1968 ............. 202

Figure 22: Front page of Black Power newsletter, September 1968 .............................. 206

Figure 23: Program cover for A Black People's Trial of Enoch Powell, February 22, 1969
......................................................................................................................................... 209

Figure 24: Althea Jones speaks to protestors outside the Mangrove Restaurant, August 9,
1970................................................................................................................................. 220
Figure 25. Black Power activity in cities with concentrated black populations, 1970-1971
......................................................................................................................................... 225
Figure 26: Darcus Howe takes details from a local man ................................................ 232

Figure 27: Neil Kenlock in front of educational and organizational posters, Panthers'
Shakespeare Road headquarters, Brixton ....................................................................... 241
Figure 28. Boys in Birmingham pose with Afro-Caribbean Circle and Black Panther
protest fliers .................................................................................................................... 247
Figure 29: CLR James at public meeting at Camden Town Hall, London ..................... 248
Figure 30: Panther newsstand outside Desmond’s Hip City, Brixton, 1973 .................. 252

Figure 31: Neil Kenlock, photograph of Olive Morris, King's College Hospital, London,
November 15, 1969 ......................................................................................................... 256
Figure 32: PEACE (People Emerging Against Corrupt Establishments), 1, no. 2, 1970,
published underground at R.A.F. Mildenhall, England .................................................. 264
Figure 33. Black Panther women march outside the Old Bailey, 1971.. ........................ 267

Figure 34. Front page, Black People's News Service, May/June 1971. .......................... 274

Figure 35: Inset photo from Figure 34. ........................................................................... 274

Figure 36: Black Panther Movement, "Slavery to Slavery," National Conference Special
Issue, May 1971, 4-5 ....................................................................................................... 284

ix
Figure 38. Linton Kwesi Johnson at the Notting Hill Carnival ...................................... 294
Figure 39: Neil Kenlock. Farrukh Dhondy holds special issue of Black Life Brixton in
front of the former Unity Centre at 74 Railton Road, March 1973 ................................ 296
Figure 40. Sa’adia Marziano speaks to supporters wearing a Black Power patch ......... 322

Figure 41: Meeting at Black Panther headquarters, Musrara, 1971 ............................... 331
Figure 42: Inside, Membership Card, Black Panther Organization-
Ramat Gan Branch, May 25, 1971. ................................................................................. 334

Figure 43: Outside, Membership Card, Black Panther Organization-
Ramat Gan Branch. ......................................................................................................... 334

Figure 44. Police battle Panther protestors in Zion Square, May 18-19, 1971 .......... .....351
Figure 45: Black Panthers carry coffins, one labeled “Discrimination,” and a fist
poster into Zion Square, August 28, 1971. ..................................................................... 354

Figure 46. Black Panthers distribute leaflets with American supporter Ronnie, who
wears a “By any means necessary” t-shirt. ..................................................................... 356

Figure 47: Darcus Howe in his home, Croydon, South London, July 28, 2011..............375

Figure 48: House of Reeves, Croydon, London, August 9, 2011 ................................... 378

Figure 49: Darcus Howe, BBC News, Croydon, London, August 9, 2011 .................... 379

Figure 50: Protestors carry a banner with the Israeli Black Panther symbol, August 6,
2011................................................................................................................................. 384

Figure 51: Tel Aviv protestors carry a banner with Arabic and Hebrew-language slogans,
August 2011 .................................................................................................................... 385

Figure 52: Fellowship on Reconciliation, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story
(1958), trans. and ed. Dalia Ziada (Cairo: American Islamic Congress, 2008) .............. 388

x