by Dan Flynn

The Black Panthers held their 35^th anniversary reunion at the University of the District of Columbia in late April. As evidenced by the gathering’s nearly vacant workshops and sparsely populated main sessions, a lot of the Panthers weren’t able to make it.

To paraphrase a popular song of their heyday, where have all the Panthers gone?

Eddie Conway of the Baltimore branch of the Black Panther Party couldn’t make the gathering. For the past 32 years, Conway has been serving a life sentence for murdering a policeman and attempting to kill another cop.

Anthony Jones, a Philadelphia Black Panther, was absent from the reunion. He got caught up in a bank-robbery more than a generation ago in which someone was murdered. He’s now serving a life-sentence as well.

Assata Shakur, perhaps unable to obtain a visa, remained in Cuba rather than catch-up on old times with her comrades. Shakur murdered a New Jersey patrolman in 1973. In 1986 she escaped from prison and fled into the arms of Fidel Castro.

Although Wesley Cook was unable to attend, he had the courtesy to send several emissaries, including his crackpot lawyer, Elliot Grossman. The teenage minister of information for the Philadelphia branch of the Party now goes by the name of Mumia Abu-Jamal and calls Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Greene home. In 1981, Abu-Jamal murdered police officer Daniel Faulkner. In the intervening years he has become a hero to the Left.

H. Rapp Brown didn’t make the reunion either. Like Cook, he’s since changed his name. He now goes by Jamil Abdullah al-Amin. Like Abu-Jamal, al-Amin delayed the seemingly obligatory act among Panthers of murdering a policeman until well after the Party had ceased to exist. He’s now serving a life sentence in Georgia for murdering a cop serving a warrant on him and shooting the deceased policeman’s partner.

David Rice and Ed Poindexter of the Omaha, Nebraska branch of Panthers weren’t in DC for the gathering either. They’ve been in prison for the last 32 years. In 1970, Rice and Poindexter instructed a juvenile associate to plant a bomb in an abandoned house. On instructions the youth called the police and reported a woman screaming inside the house. Larry Minard, one of the officers who arrived at the scene, stumbled upon the bomb and was killed.

Romain “Chip” Fitzgerald, a Southern California Black Panther, must have sent his regrets too. Fitzgerald, whose death sentence was overturned when the Supreme Court outlawed capital punishment, is incarcerated in California. His supporters label him the longest serving political prisoner in the United States. His detractors simply call him what he is: a murderer.

With these and many more Panthers either dead or wasting away in jail, who actually showed up to the meeting?

A woman named Sister Sheeba presided over large portion of the proceedings, declaring, “We have a little rat-faced boy in the White House who stole the election.” Foul-mouthed Pam Africa attended, but failed to show up to conduct her workshop. She shouted to a cheering audience later in the conference, “I am a revolutionary without a motherf---in doubt.” The New Black Panther Party made their presence known, donning all-black military costumes and shouting “All Power to the People” at opportune times. Charles Pinderhughes, a Boston College instructor, spoke and was so incensed by questions from a writer from this publication that he followed him several city blocks and forcefully took his bag. The largely non-Panther attendees enthusiastically cheered at speakers describing the murder of law enforcement officials. An anti-Semitic and anti-white rapper delighted conference-goers with his hateful rhymes.

Other than Bobby Seale and Kathleen Cleaver, few of the conference speakers or attendees had anything to do with the Black Panthers. Most were Generation X wannabes or graying radicals attempting to relive a nostalgia that they never experienced. The fact that so few people actually attended the conference-even at a predominantly black college like UDC-demonstrates that the ugly truth about the once lionized hate-group is now quite known.

The next time the Black Panthers hold a reunion, they might want to try hosting it at a venue where actual Black Panthers might be able to attend-like a jail.