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For twenty-two months in the California
Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo, after my first trial for the
death of Patrolman John Frey, I was almost continually in
solitary confinement. There, in a four-by-six, except for books
and papers relating to my case, I was allowed no reading
material. Despite the rigid enforcement of this rule, inmates
sometimes slipped magazines under my door when the guards were
not looking.
One that reached me was the May, 1970, issue
of Ebony magazine. It contained an article written by
Lacy Banko summarizing the work of Dr. Herbert Hendin, who had
done a comparative study in suicide among black people in the
major American cities. Dr. Hendlin found that the suicide rate
among Black men between the ages of nineteen and thirty-five had
doubled in the past ten to fifteen years, surpassing the rate
for whites in the same age range. The article had—and still
has—a profound effect on me. I have thought long and hard
about its implications.
The Ebony article brought to mind
Durkheim’s classic study Suicide, a book I had read
earlier while studying sociology at Oakland City College. To
Durkheim all types of suicide are related to social conditions.
He maintains that the primary cause of suicide is not individual
temperament but forces in the social environment.
In other words, suicide is caused primarily
by external factors, not internal ones. As I thought about the
conditions of Black people and about Dr. Hendlin’s study, I
began to develop Durkheim’s analysis and apply it to the Black
experience in the United States. This eventually led to the
concept of “revolutionary suicide.”
To understand revolutionary suicide it is
first necessary to have an idea of reactionary suicide, for the
two are very different. Dr. Hendlin was describing reactionary
suicide: the reaction of a man who takes his own life in
response to social conditions that overwhelm him and condemn him
to helplessness. The young Black men in his study had been
deprived of human dignity, crushed by oppressive forces, and
denied their right to live as proud and free human beings.
A section in Dostoevsky’s Crime and
Punishment provides a good analogy. One of his characters,
Mameladov, a very poor man, argues that poverty is not a vice.
In poverty, he says, a man can attain the innate nobility of
soul that is not possible in beggary; for while society may
drive the poor man out with a stick, the beggar will be swept
out with a broom. Why? Because the beggar is totally demeaned,
his dignity lost. Finally, bereft of self-respect, immobilized
by fear and despair, he sinks into self-murder. This is
reactionary suicide.
Connected to reactionary suicide, although
even more painful and degrading, is a spiritual death that has
been the experience of millions of Black people in the United
States. This death is found everywhere today in the Black
community. Its victims have ceased to fight the forms of
oppression that drink their blood. The common attitude has long
been: What’s the use? If a man rises up against a power as
great as the United States, he will not survive. Believing this,
many Blacks have been driven to a death of the spirit rather
than of the flesh, lapsing into lives of quite desperation. Yet
all the while, in the heart of every Black, there is the hope
that life will somehow change in the future.
I do not think that life will change for the
better without an assault on the Establishment [The power
structure, based on the economic infrastructure, propped up and
reinforced by the media and all the secondary educational and
cultural institutions.], which goes on exploiting the wretched
of the earth. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of
revolutionary suicide. Thus it is better to oppose forces that
would drive me to self-murder than to endure them.
Although I risk the likelihood of death,
there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of
changing intolerable conditions. This possibility is important,
because much in human existence is based upon hope without any
real understanding of the odds. Indeed, we are all—Black and
white alike—ill in the same way, mortally ill. But before we
die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if
premature death is the result, that death has a meaning
reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of
self-respect.
Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I
and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite.
We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity
that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary
forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the
risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick.
Che Guevara said that to a revolutionary
death is the reality and victory the dream. Because the
revolutionary lives so dangerously, his survival is a miracle.
Bakunin, who spoke for the most militant wing of the First
International, made a similar statement in his Revolutionary
Catechism. To him, the first lesson a revolutionary must
learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he
does not grasp the essential meaning of his life.
When Fidel Castro and his small band were in
Mexico preparing for the Cuban Revolution, many of the comrades
had little understanding of Bakunin’s rule. A few hours before
they set sail, Fidel went from man to man asking who should be
notified in case of death. Only then did the deadly seriousness
of the revolution hit home. Their struggle was no longer
romantic. The scene had been exciting and animated but when the
simple, overwhelming question of death arose everyone fell
silent.
Many so-called revolutionaries in this
country, black and white, are not prepared to accept this
reality. The Black Panthers are not suicidal; neither do we
romanticize the consequences of revolution in our lifetime.
Other so-called revolutionaries cling to an illusion that they
might have their revolution and die of old age. That cannot be.
I do not expect to live through our
revolution, and most serious comrades probably share my realism.
Therefore, the expression “revolution in our lifetime” means
something different to me than it does to other people who sue
it. I think the revolution will grow in my lifetimes, but I do
not expect to enjoy its fruits. That would be a contradiction.
The reality will be grimmer.
I have no doubt that the revolution will
triumph. The people of the world will prevail, seize power,
seize the means of production, wipe out racism, capitalism,
reactionary intercommunalism—reactionary suicide. The people
will win a new world. Yet when I think of individuals in the
revolution, I cannot predict their survival. Revolutionaries in
America, whose lives are in constant danger from the evils of a
colonial society. Considering how we must live, it is not hard
to except the concept of revolutionary suicide. In this we are
different from white radicals. They are not faced with genocide.
The greater, more immediate problem is the
survival of the entire world. If the world does not change, all
its people will be threatened by the greed, exploitation, and
violence of the power structure in the American empire. The
handwriting is on the wall. The United States is jeopardizing
its own existence and the existence of all humanity. If
Americans knew the disasters that lay ahead, they would
transform this society tomorrow for their own preservation. The
Black Panther Party is in the vanguard of the revolution that
seeks to relieve this country of its crushing burden of guilt.
We are determined to establish true equality and the means for
creative work.
Some see our struggle as a symbol of the
trend toward suicide among Blacks. Scholars and academics, in
particular, have been quick to make this accusation. They fail
to perceive differences. Jumping off a bridge is not the same as
moving to wipe out the overwhelming force of an oppressive army.
When scholars call our actions suicidal, they should be
logically consistent and describe all historical revolutionary
movements in the same way. Thus the American colonialists, the
French of the late eighteenth century, the Russians of 1917, the
Jews of Warsaw, the Cubans, the NLF, the North Vietnamese—any
people who struggle against a brutal and powerful force—are
suicidal.
Also, if the Black Panthers symbolize the
suicidal trend among Blacks, then the whole Third World is
suicidal, because the Third World fully intends to resist and
overcome the ruling class of the United States. If scholars wish
to carry their analysis further, they must come to terms with
that four-fifths of the world which is bent on wiping out the
power of the empire. In those terms the Third World would be
transformed from suicidal to homicidal, although homicide is the
unlawful taking of life, and the Third World is involved only in
defense. Is the coin then turned? Is the government of the
United States suicidal? I think so.
With the redefinition, the term
“revolutionary suicide” is not as simplistic as it might
seem initially. In coining the phrase, I took two knowns and
combined them to make an unknown, a neoteric phrase in which the
word “revolutionary” transforms the word “suicide” in to
a idea that has different dimensions and meanings, applicable to
a new and complex situations.
My prison experience is a good example of
revolutionary suicide in action, for prison is a microcosm of
the outside world. From the beginning of my sentence I defied
the authorities by refusing to cooperate; as a result, I was
confined to “lock-up,” a solitary cell. As the months passed
and I remained steadfast, they came to regard my behavior as
suicidal. I was told that I would crack and break under the
strain. I did not break, nor did I retreat from my position, I
grew strong.
If we had submitted to their exploitation and
done their will, it would have killed my spirit and condemned me
to a living death. To cooperate in prison meant reactionary
suicide to me. While solitary confinement can be physically and
mentally destructive, my actions were taken with an
understanding of the risk. I had to suffer through a certain
situation; by doing so, my resistance told them that I rejected
all they stood for. Even though my struggle might have harmed my
health, even killed me, I looked upon it as a way of raising the
consciousness of the other inmates, as a contribution to the
ongoing revolution. Only resistance can destroy the pressures
that cause reactionary suicide.
The concept of revolutionary is not defeatist or
fatalistic. On the contrary, it conveys an awareness of reality
in combination with the possibility of hope—reality because
the revolutionary must always be prepared to face death, and
hope because it symbolizes a resolute determination to bring
about change. Above all, it demands that the revolutionary see
his death and his life as one piece. Chairman Mao says that
death comes to all of us, but it varies in its significance; to
die for the reactionary is lighter than a feather; to die for
the revolution is heavier than Mount Tai.
* * * *
* The Caged Panther the
Prison Years of Huey P. Newton—J. Herman Blake—We also had
some very rich exchanges in discussing the ideas of
Emile
Durkheim—a French sociologist considered one of the founders
of the discipline Sociology. His works are cited at the
beginning of any introduction to sociology course. I was
interested in Durkheim’s ideas about “collective consciousness”
and group behavior. Newton had also read Durkheim and was much
more interested in his development of the social causes of
suicide. Newton had read an article in EBONY Magazine that a
fellow inmate had shared, discussing
Herbert Hendin’s study of the rising incidence of suicide
among African Americans—particularly males. This was a new and
surprising trend and apparently a subject of intense discussion
during the mealtimes he shared with other inmates. Newton and I
talked about Durkheim’s articulation of the major types of
suicide: Anomic, Altruistic, Egoistic, and Fatalistic.
First of all, Newton was
troubled by the increasing suicide rate among Black males. He
was dissatisfied with the way the trend was discussed in the
article for he felt the writer accepted the pattern as
understandable even if not acceptable. In talking about the
social forces used to explain suicide, Newton began to use
Durkheim’s paradigm to analyze these forces and develop an
expanded version of the theory. In Newton’s view, fatalistic
suicide as explained by Durkheim resulted from situations where
individuals felt oppressed and reacted by killing themselves as
an escape from their oppression. Newton theorized that when
faced with overwhelming social forces to kill oneself was
“reactionary suicide.” However, if the individual had a strong
desire to fulfill their life, they would move against their
oppressors and seek to liberate themselves and their people.
Even if the oppressors had much greater forces leading to the
individual’s death, the revolutionary act of moving against
oppression rather than self-destruction would result in
“revolutionary suicide” a form of liberation.
In other words,
“revolutionary suicide” resulted from such an overwhelming
desire to live free that one would take action against an
oppressor in spite of the odds. As he developed the idea of
“revolutionary suicide” in his reflections on the writings of
Herbert Hendin and the theories of
Emile Durkheim, Huey Newton seemed to become liberated
himself. Newton ruminated at length about Durkheim’s formulation
of how social forces—either tightly woven or very loose—might
lead a person to kill oneself. However, he argued further that
if social forces were overwhelmingly constraining, the
revolutionary act would be to move against the social forces and
their agents—even if that action led to one’s own death.
When he originally
articulated the concept of revolutionary suicide, Newton saw it
as another one of the abstract ideas we were developing to
stimulate his mind during his time in his jail cell. While
excited by his own analytical development of the concept, he did
not envision going further with the idea. It was one of many
ideas we discussed in relation to social conditions of poor
people around the world in general and Black people in America
in particular. Eventually it was to become the title of the
autobiography that emerged from our collaboration. Initially the
concept revolutionary suicide was ensconced in an intellectual
array of ideas to be discussed with other inmates in lieu of
brothers on the block. At that time, there was no indication
Newton wanted to pursue the idea further or promote the concept.
We talked about it and went on to other matters.—Springer
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* DVDs --
A Huey P. Newton Story 2001 /
What We Want, What We Believe The Black Panther Party Library
The Spook Who Sat By the Door /
Passin' It On; The Black Panthers' Search for Justice /
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Revolutionary Suicide
By Huey P.
Newton, Ho Che Anderson (Illustrator), Fredrika
Newton (Introduction)
Eloquently
tracing the birth of a revolutionary, Huey P.
Newton's famous and oft-quoted autobiography is as
much a manifesto as a portrait of the inner circle
of America's Black Panther Party. From Newton's
impoverished childhood on the streets of Oakland to
his adolescence and struggles with the system, from
his role in the Black Panthers to his solitary
confinement in the Alameda County Jail,
Revolutionary Suicide is smart, unrepentant, and
thought-provoking in its portrayal of inspired
radicalism.
Huey P. Newton (1942-1989) was an activist
and inspirational leader of the Black Panther Party.
Fredrika Newton joined the Black Panther
Party as a youth member in 1969 and married Huey P.
Newton in 1984. She established the Huey P. Newton
Foundation, a non-profit educational organization,
in 1993. Ho Che Anderson was born in London
in 1969 and named after the Vietnamese and Cuban
revolutionaries Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. He is
primarily known for his comic books King,
I Want to Be Your Dog, Wise Son, and
Scream Queen. |
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The Katrina
Papers is not your average memoir. It is a fusion of
many kinds of writing, including intellectual
autobiography, personal narrative,
political/cultural analysis, spiritual journal,
literary history, and poetry. Though it is the
record of one man's experience of Hurricane Katrina,
it is a record that is fully a part of his life and
work as a scholar, political activist, and
professor. The Katrina Papers provides space
not only for the traumatic events but also for
ruminations on authors such as Richard Wright and
theorists like Deleuze and Guattarri. The
result is a complex though thoroughly accessible
book. The struggle with form—the search for a
medium proper to the complex social, personal, and
political ramifications of an event unprecedented in
this scholar's life and in American social history—lies at the very heart of The Katrina Papers. It
depicts an enigmatic and multi-stranded world view
which takes the local as its nexus for understanding
the global. It resists the temptation to simplify
or clarify when simplification and clarification are
not possible. Ward's narrative is, at times, very
direct, but he always refuses to simplify the
complex emotional and spiritual volatility of the
process and the historical moment that he is
witnessing. The end result is an honesty that is
both pedagogical and inspiring.—Hank Lazer
The Katrina Papers, by Jerry W.
Ward, Jr. $18.95
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Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties.
Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Weep Not, Child
By
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
This is
a powerful, moving story that details the
effects of the infamous Mau Mau war, the
African nationalist revolt against colonial
oppression in Kenya, on the lives of
ordinary men and women, and on one family in
particular. Two brothers, Njoroge and Kamau,
stand on a rubbish heap and look into their
futures. Njoroge is excited; his family has
decided that he will attend school, while
Kamau will train to be a carpenter. Together
they will serve their country—the
teacher and the craftsman. But this is Kenya
and the times are against them. In the
forests, the Mau Mau is waging war against
the white government, and the two brothers
and their family need to decide where their
loyalties lie. For the practical Kamau the
choice is simple, but for Njoroge the
scholar, the dream of progress through
learning is a hard one to give up.—Penguin
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 6 October 2005
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