Why Black Panthers shoot-out still matters
IN THE early hours of February 10, 1971, police surrounded a property in High Point, North Carolina, where members of the Black Panther Party lived and worked.
In the ensuing shoot-out, a Panther and police officer were both wounded.
The incident did not receive much national attention at the time – armed conflict of this type was relatively common during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
But 50 years on, as the US reckons with a year that saw militarised police confront Black Lives Matter protesters and fail to prevent an attack on Capitol Hill, I believe the circumstances of this shoot-out are still relevant.
As an historian who has interviewed participants in the confrontation for a coming book, I see the raid in the context of a then-emerging strategy of urban policing in America, shaped by the racial and political clashes of the 1960s and forged through a growing partnership between US local and federal law enforcement.
That strategy, of criminalising black political activism at a time when white reactionary protesters were accommodated, has defined police responses to Americans’ activism – and political violence – over the past half-century.
The approach of law enforcement on the bitterly cold morning of February 10 1971, was aggressive and combative.
Brad Lilley, the 19-year-old leader of the High Point branch of the Black Panthers, woke at 5am to discover about 30 police officers and sheriff’s deputies surrounding the rented house he shared with three other teenage members of the organisation.
The police were seeking to evict the Panthers.
Despite the fact that Lilley and the other members were paying rent on time, High Point police were looking to force them out, in line with a national strategy of pushing Black Panthers out of communities because of their political activities.
According to a High Point Enterprise local newspaper reporter on the scene, the force was “heavily armed and wearing flak jackets,” though none of the residents had a record of criminal violence.
Previous Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F Kennedy, respectively, had offered protection to the movement at pivotal moments, such as the desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School and the Freedom Rides.
Now the FBI was focused on disrupting and discrediting these organisations and particularly their leaders, echoing director J Edgar Hoover’s 1968 warning to “prevent the rise of a ‘messiah” who could unify and electrify the black nationalist movement.”
Militant methods of policing black activists also aligned with the violent treatment of left-wing and anti-war protesters at sites like the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968 and Kent State University in 1970. Such aggressive tactics conveyed a perception of danger posed by left-wing and Black activists, an association that is still seen today in the different police responses to Black Lives Matter and anti-trump protesters compared with that of right-wing activists.
The Capitol attack shows the dangerous consequences of this tendency.
Lilley subsequently served fourand-a-half years in prison for assault with a deadly weapon. He is now a pastor and activist in High Point, working to de-escalate violence in the community.
Fifty years on from the police shoot-out, he said: “I find myself still in the struggle to help my community heal from the violence that is used against us.”
AFTER the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) stepped down in August, member countries overwhelmingly rallied behind a successor: 163 nations backed the Nigerian economist Ngozi Okonjo-iweala, a two-time finance minister who ascended the ranks of the World Bank. Every member but one: Donald Trump’s America.
Okonjo-iweala was poised to become the first woman and African national to lead the global body in its 25-year history until the United States emerged as the lone holdout. Electing her would be “a mistake,” the Trump administration’s chief trade negotiator said, citing a lack of trade experience.
Her fortunes reversed with the election of President Joe Biden, who signalled support for Okonjo-iweala on Friday, all but assuring her victory in the everyone-must-agree race once members meet to vote in Geneva.
For the US, dropping resistance to Okonjo-iweala’s selection represented
Biden’s first concrete step toward distinguishing his trade policy from Trump’s and fulfilling his promise to revive international co-operation.
But for Okonjo-iweala, securing that backing is only the start of what promises to be a gruelling diplomatic assignment. Even supporters of the WTO agree it needs substantial changes in deciding and enforcing the rules of global trade. Trump’s refusal to permit the appointment of new judges kneecapped its appellate system and ability to settle disputes. Rules that require all-member approval thwart any agility.
Okonjo-iweala’s first priority would be to ease the flow of goods – particularly protective gear, drugs and vaccines – at a time when countries are hoarding supplies, she said.
“Global recovery cannot take place without trade,” she said. “That is where my mind is. That is my number one.”
When the Trump administration dismissed her candidacy in October, Okonjo-iweala stayed mostly quiet. The Americans had endorsed a rival she admired: Yoo Myung-hee, the South Korean trade minister who worked on the revised Us-korea trade pact Trump lauded in 2018.
But Okonjo-iweala didn’t expect Robert E Lighthizer, the outgoing U.S. trade representative, to bash her credentials in a January interview with the Financial Times.
She has “no experience in trade at all,” he said. “We need a person who actually knows trade, not somebody from the World Bank who does development.”
The Nigerian candidate, who became a US citizen in 2019, rejected that view. “When you’re a woman of colour in a leadership position, these comments are not too surprising,” she said. In Nigeria, she said, the trade minister reported to her.
Okonjo-iweala met Lighthizer twice for virtual interviews last year. She recalled the conversations as routine and pleasant. The disconnect reminded her of advice from her late father, a mathematician and diplomat. His words became her mantra as she left home to study economics at Harvard University in 1973. “If you encounter a problem because you are a woman and you’re black and you’re African, take that problem, that weakness they have, and make it your strength,” she said. “Keep going.”
She went on to earn her doctorate at MIT. She spent 25 years at the World Bank, climbing to the No 2 role. She sits on the boards of Twitter and GAVI, the international vaccine alliance focused on distributing doses to developing nations.
“She has championed causes and people who have been left behind,” said Una Osili, a director for the Association for the Advancement of African Women Economists.