6. “Gangster Cigarettes” and “Revolutionary Intercommunalism”: Diverging Directions in Oakland and Algiers, 1970–1971

Sean L. Malloy

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6. “Gangster Cigarettes” and “Revolutionary Intercommunalism”

Diverging Directions in Oakland and Algiers, 1970–1971

Sean L. Malloy
Sean L. Malloy

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August1970 marked a triumphant period in the brief and turbulent history of the Black Panther Party. On August5, after almost three years behind bars, BPP cofounder and minister of defense Huey Newton was released from prison after a California appellate court threw out his man-slaughter conviction. Free on a $50,000 bail bond pending a new trial, Newton stood on top of a parked car to address thousands of admirers outside the Alameda County Courthouse.1 In the days that followed, he began to reassert control over the party, sending a letter to the government of North Vietnam offering BPP members as soldiers in the fight to liberate the South and propounding a new doctrine he dubbed “intercommunal-ism” that sought to make sense of the party’s place in an increasingly inter-connected world. As Newton celebrated his freedom in Oakland, Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver was in the midst of leading the People’s Anti-Imperialist Delegation on a high-profile tour of Asia that saw the delegation received by generals and government officials in North Korea, China, and North Vietnam. The Cleaver delegation returned to Algiers in early September to preside over the formal opening of the international section of the Black Panther Party in a renovated villa formerly occupied by the NLF. The international section served, in the words of Kathleen Cleaver, as an “embassy of the American revolution.”2Chapter6“Gangster Cigarettes” and “Revolutionary Intercommunalism”Diverging Directions in Oakland and Algiers, 1970–1971

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August1970 marked a triumphant period in the brief and turbulent history of the Black Panther Party. On August5, after almost three years behind bars, BPP cofounder and minister of defense Huey Newton was released from prison after a California appellate court threw out his man-slaughter conviction. Free on a $50,000 bail bond pending a new trial, Newton stood on top of a parked car to address thousands of admirers outside the Alameda County Courthouse.1 In the days that followed, he began to reassert control over the party, sending a letter to the government of North Vietnam offering BPP members as soldiers in the fight to liberate the South and propounding a new doctrine he dubbed “intercommunal-ism” that sought to make sense of the party’s place in an increasingly inter-connected world. As Newton celebrated his freedom in Oakland, Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver was in the midst of leading the People’s Anti-Imperialist Delegation on a high-profile tour of Asia that saw the delegation received by generals and government officials in North Korea, China, and North Vietnam. The Cleaver delegation returned to Algiers in early September to preside over the formal opening of the international section of the Black Panther Party in a renovated villa formerly occupied by the NLF. The international section served, in the words of Kathleen Cleaver, as an “embassy of the American revolution.”2Chapter6“Gangster Cigarettes” and “Revolutionary Intercommunalism”Diverging Directions in Oakland and Algiers, 1970–1971

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