Organization and Movement: The Case of the Black Panther Party and the Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention of 1970

"History seldom cooperates by providing us with clear indications of participants’ thinking during instances of “spontaneously conscious”[2] crowds. One such exceptional case is the Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention (RPCC), a multicultural public gathering of between 10,000 and 15,000 people who answered the call by the Black Panther Party (BPP) and assembled in Philadelphia on the weekend of September 5, 1970. Arriving in the midst of police terror directed against the BPP, thousands of activists from around the country were determined to defend the Panthers. They also intended to redo what had been done in 1787 by this nation’s founding fathers in the city of brotherly love–to draft a new constitution providing authentic liberty and justice for all. Although seldom even mentioned in mainstream accounts, this self-understood revolutionary event came at the high point of the sixties movement in the US[3] and was arguably the most momentous event in the movement during this critical period in American history.

This essay seeks to develop an understanding of the hearts and minds of the diverse community drawn to the convention. By examining primary documents produced by the RPCC, I hope to shed light on the popular movement’s aspirations. I seek to illustrate how the intelligence of popular movements sometimes outpaces even the most visionary statements of its leading individuals and organizations by comparing these written statements with the original platform and program of the BPP drafted four long years earlier. (All these documents are appended at the end of this book.) In the tradition of using primary documents to probe the essential character of historical events, to negate more historically superficial analyses like those relying primarily upon individual biographies of Great Men and Women, I will first discuss the BPP platform (formulated by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in October of 1966) and then analyze the proposed new constitution drafted at the RPCC. Besides the primary documents of the RPCC and fragmentary accounts by a few historians and activists, I draw from my own personal experiences as a participant in the RPCC. For 30 years, I have kept a copy of the original proposals generated by the workshops that formed when the large plenary session broke down into at least ten smaller working groups. These documents convey unambiguous statements of the movement’s self-defined goals and provide an outline of a freer society. Although it has been practically forgotten by historians, the RPCC is a key to unlocking the mystery of the aspirations of the 1960s movement. The majority of my essay deals with the RPCC because so little has been written about it.[4] I hope this article encourages future work on the RPCC.

Many writers have examined the early history of the sixties, but far fewer look at the time when the movement spread beyond the upper middle-class constituencies and elite universities that gave rise to both the civil rights movement and student movement. Popular stereotypes of the sixties often end with Martin Luther King’s assassination, yet by late 1969, the movement had become so massive and radical that its early proponents did not recognize (or sometimes even support) it. In 1970, when the movement reached its apex, working-class students, countercultural youth and the urban lumpenproletariat (unemployed street people and those who supported themselves through criminal endeavors) transformed its tactics and goals. Shortly before their murders, both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were coming to much the same radical conclusion as that shared by the participants at the RPCC: the entire world system needs to be revolutionized in order to realize liberty and justice for all.

Part of the problem involved with historical accounts of the 1960s concerns the profound character of the rupture of social tranquility and social cohesion that occurred in the USA. Consistently uncovered in Harris polls and Yankelovich surveys, the revolutionary aspirations of millions of people in the US in 1970 constitute a significant set of data for understanding how rapidly revolutionary upsurges can emerge—and how quickly they can be dissipated. In 1970, immediately after the national student strike, polls found that more than one million students considered themselves revolutionaries.[5] The next year, a New York Times investigation found that 4 out of 10 college students (more than three million people) thought that a revolution was needed in the US.[6] While these are substantial numbers, they do not count millions more outside American universities in the ghettoes and barrios, the factories, offices and suburbs. For a brief historical moment, the movement in the US accomplished a decisive break with the established system. Unlike similar events in France in May 1968, whose discontinuity from the established society is common knowledge, the “break” in US history has been hidden. Neither revolutionary activists nor mainstream historians want to acknowledge the revolutionary stridency of that period, both preferring to promulgate more socially acceptable ideas like those of the young Martin Luther King, Jr. or the still-not-mature Malcolm X. Under these circumstances, it is understandable that the revolutionary upsurge of 1970 is quite difficult to recall thirty years later.

Elsewhere I have written that the popular imagination can best be comprehended in the actions and aspirations of millions of people during moments of crisis—general strikes, insurrections, episodes of the eros effect, and other forms of mass struggle.[7] The RPCC was one such episode, and even in apparent failure, the convention inaugurated many ideas that subsequently have become so significant that millions of people were actively involved in pursuing them. For revolutionary movements, the dialectic of defeat often allows aspects of their aspirations to be implemented by the very system they opposed.

Writing the Panther Platform and Program:https://aboutplacejournal.org/issues/civil-rights/future-perfect/george-katsiaficas/