SNCC 60th

He recalled that the first meeting he attended “was in the East Village at one of the SNCC sisters’ house.” Then, after it was agreed—around March or April—some preliminary meetings at LIU’s Brooklyn campus took place with Seale and several BPP leaders, to start a chapter in NYC.

Neither Newton nor Eldridge Cleaver attended the initial meeting, and following meetings were at full capacity, forcing relocation to “a storefront on Nostrand Avenue [between Atlantic and Fulton], then heading to Harlem shortly thereafter.”

Blood McCleary, Jorge Aponte, Janet Cyril and Jordan Ford were some of Brooklyn’s initiates. Very few were more than 25 years old; most were teens.

Lumumba Shakur headed to Harlem, and Odinga took to the Bronx. The two chapters worked together, with Shakur and Odinga as co-leaders.

In Harlem, Jamal Joseph, Dhoruba bin-Wahad, Sekyiwa Tabul, Afeni Shakur, Kathleen Cleaver, Deputy Chairman David Brothers and Sundiata Acoli participated. Zayd Shakur joined that summer and Assata Shakur in 1969.

“When King was assassinated a lot of people wondered if non-violence was really the way,” said Joseph, who began attending political education classes at 15 years old. “Then on the scene were the BPP who were talking self-defense and revolutionary change.

The BPP caught the passion of what was going on, especially here in NYC.” Joseph recalled being given a stack of books—“Autobiography of Malcolm X,” Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth,” Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice” and “Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.”