“41st & Central: The Untold Story of the L.A. Black Panthers”

Elaine Brown, a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.

I attended a screening of 41st & Central last night, as part of the National Black Arts Festival. It’s a quite moving documentary about the rise of the Los Angeles branch of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, especially its founder, Bunchy Carter.

Filmmaker Gregory Everett did a marvelous job of contextualizing the movement as an outgrowth of westward black migration to escape Jim Crow, a response to white brutality towards these newcomers, and resistance of Gestapo-like LAPD police tactics.

I don’t think Everett used as critical an eye as he could have, however. I suspect that’s because of his proximity to the subject matter. Everett is a Los Angeles native, and his father, with whom he didn’t have much of a relationship, was an active Panther. His reverence and awe is palpable.

That lack of distance made the film better in some ways; I doubt the interviews would have been as intimate otherwise. But I think it caused Everett to leave a few questions unasked, unanswered, or under-examined namely: age, gender, and the criminal histories and ties of its membership.

That’s what struck me most about the Black Panther Party while watching this documentary: the leadership’s youth, its gender, and its relationship to Los Angeles street gangs.

Bunchy Carter was 27 when he was killed. Huey P. Newton was 24 when he founded the Black Panther Party. Many of the members who had been killed, were between 17 and 23. These were young men — emphasis on young.

And these were young men — emphasis on men. Although three women figured prominently in this documentary (Elaine Brown, Ericka Huggins, and Eldridge Cleaver’s ex-wife Kathleen), the Panther’s leadership was male. The only time women were explicitly mentioned in the documentary were as people — along with children — to be protected. Most photos of the Black Panthers were of black men wearing all black, sometimes holding weapons.

I suspect this gendering of the movement was tied to the fact that its founders were young men with criminal and gang histories. Bunchy Carter, for example, was part of the Slausons street gang, and founded a breakaway faction known as the Renegade Slausons before founding the Los Angeles chapter of the Panthers. Minister of information, Eldridge Cleaver, had served time for assault with intent to kill. Huey P. Newton, who founded the main branch of the party in Oakland, was also an ex-convict.

Young men tend towards knuckleheadedness in our society. Being a knucklehead will bring you in more frequent contact with cops. Being a known, repeated knucklehead will get yo’ ass whupped by the police every single time. Mind you, to merely get your ass whupped by LAPD was to get off lucky.*

Black Panther Party members had more experience with the penal system. They were more likely to encounter the police, and therefore more likely to be brutalized by them. While several interviewees mentioned the gang history and conviction histories of party members, neither they nor Everett examined the problems this may have caused for party acceptance and growth. And the gendering of the party’s leadership was not mentioned, nor were reasons for it discussed in the documentary.

In fact, the gendering of black liberation movements was significant, problematic, and could indded have caused a rift in the movement had CoIntelPro not beat them to it. Black women were starting to question this male domination of leadership, and fight for full male privilege. For example, the Combahee River Collective Statement, released in 1973, articulates a black feminist critique that explicitly names black male sexism as a barrier to female participation in these movements. Again: it’s a question that wasn’t asked or answered by the documentary, despite three women being featured in it.

Despite my quibbles, I would recommend seeing the film if you can. It captures the passions and reasons behind a little-known corner of the movement.

* I can’t overstate the brutality of the Los Angeles Police Department at the time. Chief William H. Parker had recruited officers from the Jim Crow south. Between 1968 and 1969 (according to this documentary) at least two-dozen black people were killed under questionable circumstances. Several had been shot in the back while running away. Panther member Wayne Pharr recounted a story in the movie about getting beat up by the LAPD. He said they kept telling him to run, but he wouldn’t. At the time, running was a justifiable reason for shooting a suspect.