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Design of Genocide? For Fred Hampton's funeral last week, about 1,000 blacks and a scattering of whites gathered at the First Baptist Church in suburban Melrose Park. Said the Rev. Dr. Ralph Abernathy, who succeeded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: "There is a calculated design of genocide in this country."
Is there? Specifically, are the raids against Panther offices part of a national design to destroy the Panther leadership? Federal law-enforcement officials deny it. A federal interdepartmental intelligence unit watches the Panthers as well as white militant groups—S.D.S. and the Weathermen, for example. The FBI admits only to keeping an eye on Panther activities and exchanging information with state and local law officers. Actually, what may appear to be a concerted campaign against the Panthers is not difficult to account for.
By Justice Department estimates, the Panthers number between 500 and 1,800 in some 40 chapters around the U.S. The Panthers themselves refuse to give figures; echoing Malcolm X, they contend that "those who know don't say, and those who say don't know." The members include both men and women. Since the once familiar uniform of black leather jacket, turtleneck sweater and black beret has been so widely affected by non-Panthers, they now wear it less frequently. Panther funds come mainly from the 25¢ newspaper, which sells as many as 100,000 copies a week, and from speaking fees for Panther leaders—although law-enforcement officials contend that the Panthers occasionally participate in robberies and get a one-third split of the take.
The Panthers make little secret of stockpiling arms; where it is legal, they brandish them in public. "Off the pigs"—kill the police—is a frequent Panther refrain. What the Panthers view as an extermination plot, says one federal official, is the human response of a cop confronted by someone who has publicly vowed to kill him. "That's no plot," the official says. "It's a perfectly natural reaction by a policeman facing someone who has said, even boasted, that he is prepared to shoot it out." That, added to the perennial edginess of a white policeman in the ghetto and the longstanding and usually merited hostility of blacks to the police, makes cops confronting Panthers very jumpy men who take no chances.
To the Panthers, their organization is a means of defending blacks too often harassed by white police. The proportion of blacks serving on local police forces is growing, but it is still woefully small. While many blacks serve as MPs in the Army, few take jobs as civilian police when they are discharged because of the stigma attached to police by the black community. The Panthers see policemen—white or black—as symbols of a white society that is oppressive and racist.