San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
RIVALS FIND FORGIVENESS
With common purpose, civil rights groups move forward from violent past, FBI manipulation with ‘peace treaty’
Saturday evening at the Worldbeat Center in Balboa Park, old wounds started healing.
The leaders of two prominent Black-empowerment groups signed a reconciliation agreement forgiving each other for a rivalry that turned deadly more than 50 years ago amid secret manipulations by FBI agents trying to disrupt the civilrights movement.
“It’s a peace treaty of sorts, a blueprint for moving forward,” said Henry Wallace, one of the signatories and a longtime member of the Black Panther Party in San Diego. “We are recommitting ourselves to work together for the ongoing liberation of our people.”
“The settling of conflicts is at the core of bringing good into the world,” said Maulana Karenga, head of the Los Angeles-based Organization US, the other main signatory. “All the things in our lives we’ve worked for brought us to this moment.”
About 100 people attended the event and applauded the participants. Karenga gave his remarks via Zoom after signing the agreement and sending it with representatives to the Worldbeat Center. Several guest speakers referred to the reconciliation as historic and a model for other groups trying to move beyond their differences.
The Black Panthers and US both sprang from the racial tumult of the mid-1960s. Each had active chapters in Los Angeles and San Diego, holding meetings, recruiting new members, and doing community service projects.
They were rivals, but they cooperated, Wallace said.
Unbeknownst to them, the FBI was running a counter-intelligence program that used informants, fake messages, and unflattering news coverage to stir hostilities between the groups.
Called COINTELPRO, the program was created by J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director at the time, who considered the Black Panthers “the greatest threat to internal security of the country.”
Bureau memos uncovered during a later Senate investigation talked openly about using “imaginative and hard-hitting” measures to accelerate disagreements between the groups and “grant nature the opportunity to take her due course.”
On Jan. 17, 1969, two Black Panthers, Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins, were shot and killed by US members during a meeting at UCLA. The FBI fanned the flames, distributing a f lyer in San Diego — supposedly from local Panthers — taunting US. Tensions rose.
On May 23, Black Panthers member John Savage was shot and killed while standing on a corner at Imperial Avenue and 30th Street. A week later, the local headquarters of US was raked by gunfire.
On June 5, US member Joseph Whaley was shot and wounded while walking with his girlfriend on 33rd Street in Mountain View. On Aug. 15, Sylvester Bell was fatally shot while selling copies of a Black Panthers newspaper in the parking lot of a shopping center, also in Mountain View.
An FBI memo “pointed with pride” to the violence and said:
“Shootings, beatings and a high degree of unrest continues to prevail in the ghetto area of southeast San Diego. Although no specific counterintelligence action can be credited with contributing to this overall situation, it is felt that a substantial amount of the unrest is directly attributable to this program.”
The clashes took their toll. Both organizations struggled with finances and membership. Some leaders went to prison on various charges and faded from prominence.
Six years ago, Wallace helped reactivate what is known formally as the San Diego Original Black Panther Party for Community Empowerment. Its programs include food distribution to the needy.
Around the same time, he began talking to others about reconciliation. For him, it was personal, because Savage and Bell, the Black Panthers slain in San Diego, were friends. But he also thought it would help the community heal divisions that had festered over the years amid rumors and hard feelings about what happened between the two groups.
Three years ago, Karenga came from Los Angeles to Lemon Grove for a meeting. In addition to his work with Organization US, he’s the founder of the annual Kwanzaa holiday. Wallace talked to him, and they agreed to more discussions about finding common ground.
Talks went on for months and culminated with an acknowledgement from both sides that the original shooting, at UCLA, wasn’t planned. They said an argument started, a gun went off, and then two men were dead.
“It was an accident,” Wallace said, “and the federal government used it to escalate our troubles.”
The document signed Saturday outlines some of the history and its “continuing negative impact on the Black community and the Black liberation movement.” It pledges both sides to work together on “projects of mutual interest and common good.”
The event was part of a two-day celebration of the Black Panther Party’s 55th anniversary in San Diego.