Bunchy Carter

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Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter founded the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party.

Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter was an African American activist and former gang member who was killed on January 17, 1969. He is celebrated by many supporters as a martyr in the Black Power movement in the United States.

[edit] Early history

In the early 1960s Carter was a member of the Slauson street gang in Los Angeles. He became a member of the Slauson "Renegades", a hard-core inner circle of the gang, and earned the nickname "Mayor of the Ghetto". Carter was eventually convicted of armed robbery and was interned in Soledad prison for four years. While incarcerated Carter became influenced by the Nation of Islam and the teachings of Malcolm X, and he converted to Islam. After his release, Carter met Huey Newton, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party, and was convinced to join the party in 1967. In early 1968 Carter formed the Southern California chapter of the Black Panthers and became a leader in the group. Like all Black Panther chapters, the Southern California chapter studied politics, read and memorized BPP literature, and received training in firearms and first aid. They also began the "Free Breakfast for Children" program which provided meals to the poor in the community. The chapter was very successful, gaining 50-100 new members each week by April of 1968. Notable members included Elaine Brown, Geronimo Pratt, and Angela Davis.

[edit] The Southern California chapter of the Black Panthers

The Black Panthers were opposed by the secret FBI operation COINTELPRO, and the party was referred to as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country" by J. Edgar Hoover. As revealed later in Senate testimony, the FBI worked with the Los Angeles Police Department to harass and intimidate party members. In 1968 and 1969, numerous false arrests and warrantless searches were documented, and several members were killed in altercations with the police. The "Breakfast for Children" program was effectively shut down by daily arrests of members, with all charges most often dropped within a week. "The Breakfast for Children Program" wrote J. Edgar Hoover in an internal FBI memo in May of 1969, "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." Later that year, Hoover submitted orders to FBI offices: "exploit all avenues of creating dissension within the ranks of the BPP," and "submit imaginative and hard-hitting counterintelligence measures aimed at crippling the BPP."

The Black Panthers were also rivals of a black nationalist group named United Slaves, founded by Ron Karenga. The groups had very different aims and tactics, but the groups often found themselves competing for potential recruits. The FBI intensified this antipathy, sending forged letters to each group which proported to be from the other group, so that each would believe that the other was publicly humiliating them. This rivalry came to a head in 1969, when the two groups supported different candidates to head the Afro-American Studies Center at UCLA. He had a son who was born in April of 1969 after he was murdered, who coincidentally attended Cal State Long Beach where Karenga was the chairman of the Black Studies Department.

[edit] The killings

John Huggins and Bunchy Carter, members of the Black Panther Party, were shot and killed on January 17, 1969.

At a Black Student Union meeting on campus on January 17, 1969, Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, another BPP member, were heard making derrogatory comments about Karenga, the founder of United Slaves. After the meeting, George and Larry "Ali" Stiner, United Slaves members, are alleged to have confronted Huggins and Carter in a hallway outside. There are many discrepancies in the various reports of the incident, but all accounts agree that the Stiners shot Carter and Huggins dead. Both Stiners brothers were convicted and sent to San Quentin Prison, where they remained for four years.

Richard Held, the local COINTELPRO head at the FBI, took credit for the deaths of Carter and Huggins in internal FBI memoranda, later revealed in Senate testimony. He believed that the deaths were a direct result of the FBI documents provided to United Slaves that reputed to come from the Black Panthers.

[edit] Repercussions

The LAPD responded to the attack by raiding an apartment used by the Black Panthers and arresting 75 members, including all remaining leadership of the chapter, on charges of conspiring to murder United Slaves members in retaliation. (These charges were later dropped.) This reaction fueled claims that United Slaves was being used by the FBI to target the Black Panthers. Later in 1969, two other Black Panther members were killed and one other was wounded by United Slaves members.

The Black Student Union at UCLA was shocked and devastated by the murders, and ceased to operate effectively on campus for several years. Richard Held was promoted to the special agent in charge of the San Francisco office.

In the years following the deaths of Carter and Huggins, the Black Panther party became more suspicious of outsiders and became more focused on defense rather than community improvement. The group eventually became marginalized, and officially disbanded in 1980.

[edit] External links

• The FBI's War on the Black Panther Party's Southern California Chapter by the Maoist Internationalist Movement
• Los Angeles Gangs from streetgangs.com
• Civil Rights Movement cemented in UCLA history by the Daily Bruin, UCLA

[edit] References

• Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story, Doubleday, New York, 1992.
• 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 Afrikan Amerikan 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.