A Panther’s Tale First Chief Of Staff Wants To Keep His Party’s Legacy Alive Through Black Panther Legacy Tours

“Legacy,” the dictionary says, is something handed on from those who have come before.

David Hilliard’s dream is to pass on the history of the Black Panther Party and its co-founder, Huey P. Newton, a legacy he believes is almost forgotten - but shouldn’t be.

To educate those who do not know about the party, as well as to rekindle the awareness of those who may have forgotten, Hilliard began leading Black Panther Legacy Tours to historical sites in Oakland last October.

Hilliard, 55, the party’s first chief of staff shortly after it was founded in 1966 in Oakland by Newton and Bobby Seale, says there is a story to tell about the contribution the party played in the civil rights movement, as well as in its achievements in community-service programs.

He finds it distressing that people have little positive memories of what the Panthers did 30 years ago; many only connect the name with violence.

“Kids today don’t even know who Huey Newton was,” he says. “They ask, ‘Is he a rock star?’”

Newton was Hilliard’s idol and friend from grammar school. He believes Newton and other party members had visions with responsible agendas. This is the Panther legacy that he wants to keep alive.

Hilliard is also executive director of the non-profit Huey P. Newton Foundation, formed in 1993 to continue the Panthers’ social programs and to promote the teachings and social activism of Newton.

He’s pleased that, under the auspices of the foundation, the legacy tours have been so successful, and looks forward to increased participation during this Black History Month (although he prefers to call it Black Heritage Month.)

No question, the tours reflect Hilliard’s version of history and emphasize the positive things the Panthers stood for. But the tours also touch upon the party’s ugly side.

Participants - all ages and races - meet at the West Oakland Library, down the street from where the Pointer Sisters lived, and across the street from De Fremery Park, site of many Black Panther community-service programs and demonstrations. Inside the library, a large canvas mural of Newton (in his familiar pose, sitting in a high-backed wicker chair) dominates the lobby.

From his front seat in a comfortable mini-bus, Hilliard relates anecdotes and history over a loudspeaker as the tour winds through North and West Oakland neighborhoods. Most of the sites are viewed from the bus, although at several stops passengers get off.

The first stop is where it all began in October 1966, at a house that was once the anti-poverty center (now the Ebony Lady Salon). Here the party wrote its Ten Point Program and developed its revolutionary agenda of social changes. Co-founders Newton and Seale called for an end to police brutality and demanded adequate housing, employment and education for the city’s Afro-American community.

A traffic signal at the corner represents one of the first successful actions of the newly formed party. The Black Panthers demanded its installation in 1967 after one child had been killed and several injured crossing the busy street. When the city postponed placement of the signal, armed Black Panthers stationed themselves on the corner directing traffic and escorting children across the intersection.

“The police came and took over, which is what the Panthers wanted in the first place,” Hilliard relates. The signal was installed soon afterward. “We considered it our first community survival program,” he notes wryly.

The bus stops in front of several party members’ homes - Bobby Seale’s, where early public education classes were held and where plans were drawn up to send an armed delegation to the state capitol to oppose gun law restrictions; Hilliard’s home, where he lived when he and Newton both attended school nearby; Newton’s family home after he moved to Oakland from Louisiana in 1945; and the home of Bobby Hutton.

Hutton was the first party member to die at the hands of authorities (at the age of 17), when he was shot by police in April 1968. The bus stops at the site of the shooting, and after Hilliard plays a tape of an eye-witness account, everyone exits to listen to his story.

Bullet holes can still be seen in the side of the house, which was bombarded with tear gas and set on fire after 30 minutes of gunfire.

“It sounded like a war,” says Hilliard, who was hiding under a bed in the house next door.

The bus drives by the former site of Merritt Junior College on Martin Luther King Jr. Way, where students Newton and Seale first became involved in organized community protest.

Just down the street, the party opened its first office in 1967. Now the building houses the It’s All Good Bakery, owned by Kim Cloud, who once ate in the Panthers’ free breakfast program. Today Cloud contributes free cake to tour participants while Hilliard relates events.

When they outgrew the space, the party moved to their second office, where they were targeted in a drive-by shooting by two off-duty policemen, supposedly enraged that Newton would not be executed for the death of fellow officer John Frey. (The Panther leader was convicted of voluntary manslaughter rather than first-degree murder. Charges against Newton, who was wounded in the altercation, were eventually dropped when, according to party literature, it was determined that another officer’s gunfire had killed Frey.)

Later, the bus stops at the site of the confrontation before driving on to an attractive Victorian home that was the party’s fourth office. Hilliard recalls how this house was turned into a fortress, with sand bags lining the walls and thick steel plates covering windows at night.

“We were always under the pressure of imminent police raids and that kind of stuff,” he says. “It was very unnerving to be in a Black Panther Party office during that period.”

The free-breakfast-for-children program began in 1969 at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church (now St. Andrew’s Baptist Church). At its height, the party had 40 chapters in different cities conducting hot breakfast programs for children - a model later adopted by government agencies across the nation.

It was the party’s first in a series of community programs that included free clothing, food, medical care and sickle cell anemia testing (Hilliard says more than 100,000 people were tested during the Panthers’ prime years).

The bus drives by the Alameda County Courthouse, site of frequent “Free Huey” demonstrations which projected the party and Newton into national prominence, and the penthouse apartment overlooking Lake Merritt where Newton lived after his release from prison.

The Panthers were criticized for using party funds to keep their leader in a lavish place, but, says Hilliard, “We put Huey in here for security reasons. We knew the police would not come and kick down the doors of the place where Charlie Finley (then owner of the Oakland A’s baseball team) lived.”

Black Panther community service programs ended in the late 1970s and the party disbanded in 1980, recounts Hilliard - some of its members in prison, some in exile, some dead.

Huey Newton was murdered in August 1989, shot by a drug dealer. Bus passengers get out and walk to the front of the house where two faded stencils of a man in a paramilitary pose mark the sidewalk.

Hilliard looks about and comments softly, “There is not much change in this community at all. That is the tragedy - that’s the irony of the whole Black Panther Party history … that history does tend to repeat itself.

“Huey Newton died a very degrading and very demoralizing death because of drug addiction. And that stuff still happens daily in this community.

“So when I come down here, you know, this is really the low point of this whole trip, because a lot of these kids, when I look at them, I see their mothers and fathers. This stuff is cyclical. It goes on and on. It perpetuates itself. For me, this is like seeing ghosts.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: If you go Currently, there are Black Panther Legacy Tours scheduled at noon one or two Saturdays every month. If demand exceeds the bus’ capacity of 36, a second tour at 2 p.m. handles the overflow. Tickets cost $20 if purchased in advance, $25 on the day of the tour. Advance reservations are advised. The foundation also offers self-guided driving tours for $10. The tour begins at the West Oakland Library, at 18th and Adeline streets. At its conclusion, Hilliard hosts a question-and-answer session in the library. For more information, call (510) 986-0660.