Bunchy Carter

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Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter (born October 12, 1942 in Louisiana , † January 17, 1969 in Los Angeles ) was an Afro-American activist from Los Angeles who joined the 1967 Black Panther Party . He was the founder and leader of the Southern California District and the party's deputy secretary of defense . Shot by supporters of the militant black nationalist Ron Karenga , Carter became a martyr of the Black Power movement in the United States of America .

Life

Carter was the leader of the 5,000-strong Slauson street gang in Los Angeles and its hard core, the Slauson 'Renegades' in the early 1960s . He was nicknamed the Ghetto Mayor ( Mayor of the Ghetto ) ".

Convicted of armed robbery and imprisoned for four years in Soledad prison, he came under the influence of the Afro-American Nation of Islam and converted to their Islam.

Back in freedom, he immediately joined the Panthers in 1967 after meeting Huey Newton , the leading head of the Black Panther Party . In early 1968 he founded the Southern California Party District, which was soon very successful and attracted 50 to 100 new members per week, including later party chairman Elaine Brown and Geronimo Pratt . According to Brown, Angela Davis was also there for a short time, although, like many recruits, she did not stay with the Panthers. The Panthers faced two determined adversaries because of their success: the FBI and black nationalists.

COINTELPRO in Southern California

The FBI's covert operation COINTELPRO focused on the Black Panthers during this time, and it has been established that the federal police also worked with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD ) to intimidate Panthers and hinder their activities. Arrests and surveillance increased in 1968 and 1969. Some party members died in firefights. J. Edgar Hoover demanded that everything be done to sabotage the Black Panther Party, including peaceful and useful propaganda campaigns such as the Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren. Hoover called this campaign the greatest obstacle in trying to isolate the BPP in May 1969 and in the eyes of their sympathizers in the population (the free breakfast "represents the best and most influential activity going for the BPP and, as such, is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for . "). Hoover demanded that all intelligence agencies pull out all the stops to infiltrate, disintegrate and combat the BPP.

Ron Karengas United Slaves (US)

Their success made the Black Panthers threatening competitors of Ron Karenga's organization US . The left and Maoist Panthers had renounced black nationalism and the two groups also differed in their tactics, but of course they got into each other's enclosure.

Carter's death

After a meeting of the Black Student Union at UCLA's Campbell Hall on January 17, 1969, the situation exploded. Bunchy Carter and his fellow party member John Huggins had allegedly disparaged each other about Ron Karenga and his United Slaves (panther interpretation of the abbreviation US ). Others speak of heated arguments between US members and Elaine Brown (later BPP party leader). The two Panthers were shot dead in a gun battle by brothers George and Larry Stiner after the gathering. Other US supporters were also involved in the shooting. The BPP initially assumed a planned assassination attempt, while the US spoke of a random event. Geronimo Pratt , Carter's successor as head of security at the BPP, but removed from the party by Newton as a supporter of Cleaver, later spoke of an unfortunate coincidence. The brothers George and Larry Stiner and Donald Hawkins surrendered to the police; they were convicted on the basis of testimony from Black Panther members. The Stiners got life and Hawkins was serving his time in a juvenile detention center. The Stiner brothers escaped from San Quentin in 1974 and George is still on the run, Larry surrendered in 1994 and is serving his sentence again in San Quentin.

Effects

After the deaths of Carters and Huggins, the Los Angeles police arrested the remaining senior management of the Black Panthers in Southern California, a total of 75 people, allegedly to prevent their campaign of revenge against the US . This approach seemed to confirm Karenga's group's collaboration with the FBI. In 1969, several Black Panthers were attacked by Karega's men in San Diego, which resulted in deaths.

swell

  • Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story, Doubleday, New York, 1992.
  • Scot Brown, Fighting for US: Maulana Karenga, the US Organization, and Black Cultural Nationalism, NYU Press, New York, 2003.
  • The Black Panther: Black Community News Service newspaper , Berkeley, Spring 1991.
  • Kit Kim Holder, The History of the Black Panther Party 1966-1972: A Curriculum Tool for African American Studies, 1990, Amherst College Library, Amherst, Mass.
  • Huey Newton , War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America , University of California Santa Cruz, June 1980.
  • Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, South End Press: Boston, 1990.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carter's son, born in April 1969, attended the State University of California in Long Beach from 1987 to 1992 when Ron Karenga was head of the Black Studies Department there.
personal data
SURNAME Carter, Bunchy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carter, Alprentice (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American political activist
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Louisiana
DATE OF DEATH 17th January 1969
Place of death Los Angeles , California