Black Panthers

Both Jerry DeFrance and I get a daily email from an outfit called “Delancey Place.” They excerpt a few paragraphs from a book each day and give you info on how to buy the book. They make a small fee if you buy it through their link.

Many times, the excerpts are entertaining, and sometimes controversial. Today’s was about the Black Panthers and gave a glowing description of their rise, their community service and their generally high level of education, including how one founder, Huey Newton, graduated from Berkeley High as a functional illiterate and then taught himself to read by repeatedly going through Plato’s Republic. Nothing about them being a menace to the general population.

Here’s another view of the Black Panthers:

Pete...around 1968, Stokely Carmichael of the Panthers had disappeared from public view.  I was there when he reappeared in Panmunjom in the middle of the DMZ of the Korean peninsula.   He came through with a small North Korean tour group. The buzz got around there quickly.  He approached one of our guys, a black fellow, also college degreed and began to berate him some for his service.  Our guy, Brook, just grinned and said "bullshit" and walked away. 

From Jerry DeFrance who was an MP stationed at the DMZ. All the MPs stationed there were tall, physically fit, good-looking men, deliberately selected to tower over the smaller North Koreans. They would be on hand when the negotiations were going on in the modest building in the DMZ.

Carmichael’s association with the North Koreans is similar to Traitor Jane Fonda’s treachery that resulted in the torture and death of American prisoners in North Vietnam. We should not, in my opinion, give awards to people who did those things as if all is forgotten. And books should give a balanced account.

Yeah, I know. Probably have better luck waiting for pigs to fly.

PS Jerry gets this post, so if he has corrections, they can appear.