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Huey coined the term “revolutionary suicide” to describe this phenomenon.
revolutionary suicide is infused with the possibility that one’s death will further the revolutionary cause.
Other so-called revolutionaries cling to an illusion that they might have their revolution and die of old age. That cannot
prison is a microcosm of the outside world.
All of us shared the dignity and respect he commanded.
racism is as oppressive in the North as in the South.
who would be free must strike the first blow. FREDERICK DOUGLASS, My Bondage and My Freedom
From him we learned, and never doubted it, that the Negro was in every way equal to the white man. And we fiercely resolved to prove it.
He somehow managed to grow up with all his pride and dignity intact.
Anyone who tried to bother us, Black or white, had to contend with my father.
My father stood up to the white South until the day he left for California. He has never returned.
Looking back, I see that my friends and I were all in the same boat—heading for hell on earth and trying to reach heaven in church. Nevertheless, taking part in church activities and leading the services gave us a feeling of importance unequaled anywhere else in our lives.
We love our country, dearly love her, but she does not love us—she despises us.
Since I had not been killed, I guess I concluded that I could not be killed.
my last day will never come. Even so, I tell the comrades you can only die once, so do not die a thousand times worrying about it. Around this time some people got the notion that I had mystical powers. I began to put various friends and acquaintances into hypnotic trances, mostly at parties or in some of the rap sessions with brothers on the block. I learned the technique first from Melvin, who had been taught by Solomon Hill, a fellow student at Oakland City College. Later, I studied hypnosis techniques on my own and became pretty good at it. It is easy to learn, but dangerous. Just learning
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reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. . . . My homemade education gave me, with every additional book I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was affecting the black race in America.
The people were certainly working hard. It seemed we were predestined to endless toil.
They operated through someone else’s power—the oppressor’s—and they were not free as long as they had to reject some part of themselves.
Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death
“Nothing can be real if it cannot be conceptualized, articulated, and shared.”
scoring on whites was a strike against injustice.
Huh?
She was a hard worker and willing to support us; she really understood and accepted my problem.
Huh?
but to do so meant accepting the conditions necessary to marriage in an oppressive situation.
Huh?
When I was falsely convicted of the assault against Odell Lee,
Huh?
One day he tried to prevent me from dipping, and I called him for protecting the oppressor’s interests and smashed him with a steel
Huh?
Bobby and I saw this as an opportunity to move Soul Students a step further by adopting a program of armed self-defense.
Carrying guns for self-defense was perfectly legal at the time.
Our program was designed to lead the brothers into self-defense before we were completely wiped out physically and mentally.
if the Black community has learned to respect anything, it has learned to respect the gun.
black rage,
The oppressed are always defensive; the oppressor is always aggressive and surprised when the people turn back on him
we viewed the government as an enemy,
We continue to believe that the Black Panther Party exists in the spirit of Malcolm.
forty acres and two mules.
We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
It was work that had profound significance for me; the very meaning of my life was in it, and it brought me closer to the
highly organized Establishment forces—the
have made up my mind, wherever I go I shall go as a man and not as a slave. . . . I shall always be courteous and mild in deportment towards all with whom I come in contact, at the same time firmly and constantly endeavouring to assert my equal right as a man and a brother.
POCKET LAWYER OF LEGAL FIRST AID
Black men and women who refuse to live under oppression are dangerous to white society because they become symbols of hope to their brothers and sisters, inspiring them to follow their example.
they had plun dered the wealth of the world
military-industrial complex was practically invincible
all white people were devils;
Charles Garry was obviously an extraordinary man.
revolutionary man always transcends himself or otherwise he is not a revolutionary man,
Too many so-called leaders of the movement have been made into celebrities and their revolutionary fervor destroyed by mass media.
The task is to transform society; only the people can do that—not heroes, not celebrities, not stars.
HO CHI MINH, “Word-Play II,” Prison Diary
Generation after generation of the majority group have been born, they have worked, and they have seen the fruits of their labors in the life, liberty, and happiness of their children and grandchildren. Generation after generation of Black people in America have been born, they have worked, and they have seen the fruits of their labors in the life, liberty, and happiness of the children and grandchildren of their oppressors, while their own descendants wallow in the mire of poverty and deprivation,
