Thread by @FarFarrAway

(A thread): Yesterday, I asked whose reaction you wanted to hear about the removal of the Rizzo statute. @RobertSkvarla suggested one of the Black Panthers who were stripped naked & arrested at Rizzo's command in 1970.

This is Herbert Hawkins, 71. He was one of those men.

Here's some background on the totally unfounded, dehumanizing, racists raids across Black Panther offices in the city on that day in 1970 in Philadelphia.

explorepahistory.com/displayimage.p…

Herbert invited me, a stranger, into his Brewerytown home yesterday - during a pandemic - to talk about his recollections, his thoughts on Rizzo and what's going on today for 45 minutes.

Since I was on a story with other reporters charged w/ gathering reactions f/many people, much of my conversation w/Herbert didn't get in. That happens in journalism and that's OK.

That being said, I was honored he shared his story with me & I'd like to share it with you here:

Herbert was pushed out of his West Philly home at 17 by his parents, and, not knowing what to do, he entered the U.S. Army and was sent to fight in Vietnam.

"I was pretty naïve in the realm of politics, and I’d say life," he told me.

While over in Vietnam, he met some men from Louisiana who opened his mind to the systems and structures he'd lived his life under but never realized before - including the very Army he was in.

"I’m not anti-Army," he said. "I think the Army can be a leg up for a young man, it’s just the same system that they’re talking about now is used in the Army, maybe in negative ways. We were subjected to institutional racism in the Army."

"The Army puts a hell of an indoctrination on you to get you to go and fight for, a lot of times, for causes that you really don’t know the real meaning of. So when I got out the Army I was looking for something to help voice my opinion and I joined the Black Panther Party."

He was 20 when he got back to Philly from the Army and joined the Black Panthers.

"The Black Panthers wasn’t a cause to fight for, it was more of a tool to educate people to a system that exploits people and it uses racism to disguise it’s real meaning."

"There’s so much propaganda for and against what we were doing that a lot of people had misconceptions about what the party was all about. A lot of people think the Panthers was anti-white. And we wasn’t. We had the original rainbow coalition."

"I think the Panthers had their rise and fall. When I look back I see that it kinda embarrass me that we were destroyed by almost the same strategy that the system’s been using for years, divide and conquer. They definitely got us to destroy ourselves."

"But I think we had an impact on society and we planted some seeds. I mean it’s been 50 years and I’ve seen seeds come out of different generations and it surprises me. Sometimes I feel that I failed. And sometimes it makes me feel that we had some kind of success."

"I feel like taking down the Rizzo statute is such a small step. I forgot it was down there. They talk about terrorism and I think people like Trump and Rizzo use the fear and ignorance of people so they can promote their own platforms."

"They get white people to blame blacks for their problems when it’s really the system. It really is geared to keep the money going the way it’s been going."

Back in 1970 Philly: "You were having a consistency of black men so-called hanging themselves in police custody. There were certain police stations that were known for that. And the way they were supposed to have did it was so ludicrous."

"You know that what happened is he got his neck broke while he was in police custody. I think it’s always been like that. You get juries that believe the police don’t lie."

"If you think 'Here’s a man on video shooting somebody down in cold blood' and can still be acquitted, what do you think it was like when all you had was the police’s word? You could forget it."

Hawkins said they knew the August 1970 raid was coming that day.

"Rizzo said by the morning, we’re gonna have them all in jail. We knew they wasn’t bullshitting. The captain said 'You all eat a good dinner.' But we wasn’t going to leave our offices."

"Early that morning there was banging on the door. They used tear gas to get us to come out. When they filled the building full of gas, we came out. But some people believe that the purpose of the Panthers was to shoot it out with police. That wasn’t our purpose."

"Our purpose was to carry on our daily work and if police come, to hold off enough until news media got there so we wasn’t killed in our sleep. That was our only purpose, not to be killed in our sleep... It was so that we could live to carry out our duties."

Once they gassed them out of the house, police made them all strip outside, in front of media.

"They made us strip everything while we had guns at our heads," Hawkins said.

"One thing you figure when they strip you naked they’re not going to kill you. If anything that’s what that meant to me. They was more concerned with embarrassing us than killing us at that time, because the news media was out there."

"We were taken down to 8th and Race (police headquarters) with just our drawers. They let us put our drawers back on. When they took us around the ramp (away from the media) that’s when they beat me."

"They didn’t say nothing. I could look in their face and I think it was just something they thought they was supposed to do. Whether they were ordered or not, I think it was something they felt they was supposed to do."

Hawkins was in custody for two weeks.

"I know they planted a guy in my cell. He was as obvious as a three dollar bill. He wasn’t even a good informant."

The case was eventually dropped, without a trial.

***I appear to have reached a thread tweet limit. Will do part II.